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.