Coward Plays 2

The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and versatility Coward's 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. Coward's sparkling dialogue and repartee have ensured the play's 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 Coward's most powerful writing.

"Copyright in renewal 1973 by Noèel Coward"--Title page verso.

This is the eighth volume of plays in the Coward collection.

The first single edition of Noël Coward's most controversial play. "Only in Semi-Monde does Coward find a successful metaphor for the sexual complications that lie behind his posturing. Semi-Monde is easily the most visually daring of his comedies, and the most intellectually startling ... made up of sexually mischievous tableaux vivants and gets much nearer the homosexual knuckle than Coward's public image allowed." - (John Lahr, London Review of Books) Written in 1926 and originally entitled Ritz Bar, Semi-Monde was considered too daring for its time: "its production in London or New York seemed unlikely as some of the characters, owing to lightly suggested abnormalities, would certainly be deleted by the censor" (Noël Coward, Present Indicative). The play finally received its public premiere only after Coward's death, at the Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow, in September 1977.

Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book.

The Noël Coward Reader offers a wonderfully wide-ranging selection—the first of its kind—of the best of the Master’s oeuvre, entertainingly annotated and abundantly illustrated, and including material that has never before been published. Here are scenes from Coward’s famous plays, from Private Lives to Blithe Spirit, and his screenplays, from Brief Encounter to In Which We Serve. Here are four of his best short stories, scenes from his only novel, and a generous selection of his verse, alongside the lyrics of many of his most sublime songs, including “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “The Stately Homes of England,” and “Mad About the Boy.” The Noël Coward Reader is a must-have book both for those who adore his work and for those who are just discovering the many-faceted delights of his comic genius.