The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.
§ 14. George Colman the Younger: Inkle and Yarico
George Colman, son of the dramatist and theatre-manager of the same name, displayed more ingenuity in giving a romantic atmosphere to his conventional ideas. He had already produced two musical comedies at the Hay before, in 1787, he made his name at that theatre with Inkle and Yarico. Inkle, the respectable, city-bred youth, is conveying his betrothed Narcissa back to her father, the wealthy governor of Barbadoes. On the voyage, he and his comic attendant Trudge are accidentally left on an island where they are saved from cannibals by two native women, with whom they severally fall in love. Eventually, they reach Barbadoes, accompanied by their savage preservers. Inkle is now faced with the alternative of losing his profitable match with Narcissa or of abandoning the faithful Yarico, and, to guide him in this ethical problem, he has only the maxims of Threadneedle street. Thus the play teaches that a sound commercial training, which commands respect in London town, may lamentably fail its adept in the larger and more varied world outside, and, in the last two acts, Inkle is amply humiliated because of his signal ingratitude to his benefactress. To inculcate this lesson, Colman had worked one of Addison’s Spectators into a pleasing opera, not without touches of romantic imagination. Yarico’s appeal to Inkle—