The Jealous Wife

George Colman the Elder

The Jealous Wife is a 1761 British play by George Colman the Elder. Full text available here. A comedy - it was first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre on 12 February 1761 and ran for nineteen performances in its first season and seventy by the end of the century. It was translated into French and German.^[1]

Colman was indebted to Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones as an inspiration for several characters and incidents and is an early example of a dramatisation of a popular novel.^[2] An Advertisement preceding The Jealous Wife in Colman's Dramatick Works of 1777 reveals that he also developed ideas for the play from The Spectator, The Connoisseur and The Adelphi of Terrance.^[3] David Garrick helped Colman to work on the draft and cut down its length.^[4]

References

1. Nettleton p.669
2. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21) Volume X. The Age of Johnson. Cambridge University Press. 2000. ISBN 1-58734-073-9.
3. Kewes, Paulina (2001). ""<a> play, which I presume to call original": appropriation, creative genius, and eighteenth-century playwriting.". Studies in the Literary Imagination.
4. Nettleton p.669

Bibliography

• Nettleton, George H. & Case, Arthur E. British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan. Souther Illinois University Press, 1975.