Noel Coward 
Coward Plays: 2 
Private Lives; Bitter-Sweet; the Marquise; Post-Mortem

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.