"Like two single gentlemen rolled into one"
About this Quote
A joke that lands because it pretends to be a compliment while quietly turning its subject into a social oddity. "Like two single gentlemen rolled into one" is Colman doing what good stage comedy does: compressing a whole moral inventory into a single, airy image. The line flatters with its surface math (twice the gentleman!) but the arithmetic is off in a way that signals satire. Two bachelors "rolled into one" suggests excess without substance: doubled manners, doubled self-regard, doubled fussy ritual, yet no corresponding increase in warmth, usefulness, or intimacy.
The phrasing borrows the language of tailoring and packaging. A person becomes a product, a bundle of traits cinched together for public display. That matters in the late 18th-century theatrical world Colman inhabited, where "gentleman" wasn’t only a class marker; it was a performance with rules, costumes, and cues. To be a "single gentleman" carried its own comic associations: leisure, fastidiousness, a certain nervous pride in independence. Multiply it by two and you get caricature, not excellence.
Subtextually, the line needles a type that comedy loved: the man so committed to being seen as proper that he becomes absurdly self-contained. It also hints at the period’s anxieties about masculinity and sociability: a gentleman defined too much by status and not enough by relationships risks turning into a walking etiquette manual. Colman’s intent isn’t just to mock one character; it’s to expose how easily "gentility" can be inflated into a hollow spectacle.
The phrasing borrows the language of tailoring and packaging. A person becomes a product, a bundle of traits cinched together for public display. That matters in the late 18th-century theatrical world Colman inhabited, where "gentleman" wasn’t only a class marker; it was a performance with rules, costumes, and cues. To be a "single gentleman" carried its own comic associations: leisure, fastidiousness, a certain nervous pride in independence. Multiply it by two and you get caricature, not excellence.
Subtextually, the line needles a type that comedy loved: the man so committed to being seen as proper that he becomes absurdly self-contained. It also hints at the period’s anxieties about masculinity and sociability: a gentleman defined too much by status and not enough by relationships risks turning into a walking etiquette manual. Colman’s intent isn’t just to mock one character; it’s to expose how easily "gentility" can be inflated into a hollow spectacle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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