Pity the Fool: Satire, Sentiment, and Aristocratic Vice in George Colman’s The Suicide

Abstract

The Suicide, A Comedy (1778) by George Colman (the Elder) is a sophisticated comedic response to the scourge of fashionable suicide in late eighteenth-century Britain. The play simultaneously operates on two comedic planes: (1) it aims the purgative power of contemptible and socially aversive satire at the bon-ton by insinuating the scandalous suicide of high-profile aristocrat John Damer (1744–76); and (2) the reformation of Tobine—the middle-class protagonist who aspires to fashionable self-destruction—invests in the socially rehabilitative and compassionate humour of sentimental comedy. Two comedic strategies are aimed at two different audiences, with both strategies working to reinforce middle-class values. The result is a comedy that merges two kinds of laughter to form a benign affective antidote to interclass suicidal contagion. This comedic antidote functions as an early demonstration of the positive value of narratives that depict the overcoming of suicidal intent—or what modern sociologists call the Papageno effect.