Coward Plays: 2: Private Lives; Bitter-Sweet; The Marquise; Post-Mortem (World Classics)

Coward Plays: 2: Private Lives; Bitter-Sweet; The Marquise; Post-Mortem (World Classics) by Coward, Noël. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780413460806.

The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and versatility Cowards writing achieved in the late 1920s. The volume contains his best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit when it was first staged in 1930. Cowards sparkling dialogue and repartee have ensured the plays popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gave me more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Not especially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or its production but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth century comedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is a vilification of war that contains some of Cowards most powerful writing.