ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, I, 31 July 1808, pp. 490–2. Colman’s play, The Africans; or, War, Love, and Duty, with music by Michael Kelly, premiered at the Haymarket on 29 July 1808 and was clearly written in part as a response to the abolition of the slave trade; it had an excellent run of thirty-one nights. With a strong denunciation of slavery, The Africans also represents an attempt to depict, with some accuracy, life in Africa. It calls forth a long appreciation by Hunt, a striking case of his liking a contemporary play. For later views of Colman, see, for example, The Examiner, IV, 24 March 1811, pp. 186–8 and below, pp. 166–9, and Hunt’s review of Richard Brinsley Peake’s Memoirs of the Colman Family in the Edinburgh Review, lxxiii (July 1841), 389–424, reprinted in Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist, ed. Charles Kent (London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1889), pp. 429–32.
