Noel Coward 
Coward Plays: 1 
Hay Fever; the Vortex; Fallen Angels; Easy Virtue

This first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Coward

and the century were still in their 20s. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley,

Coward”s first biographer.








Hay Fever, a comedy of bad

manners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who have

all been invited independently for a weekend at their country house

near Maidenhead.
The Vortex
was a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction onto

the stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned.
Fallen Angels, which is written for two star actresses

was described as ”degenerate”, ”vile”, ”obscene”, ”shocking” – the

second half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologue

between the two women.
Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic tribute to a

lost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directly

to the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentally

hypocritical 20s society.







‘He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever

again in theatre history’ Terence Rattigan