Coward Plays; One - Hay Fever, The Vortex, Fallen Angels, Easy Virtue; Plays Two; Private Lives, Bitter-Sweet, The Marquise, Post-Mortem; Plays : Three; Deisgn For Living, Cavalcade, Conversation Piece, Tonight at *:30 (I)

Noel Coward

ISBN 10: 0413460509 / ISBN 13: 9780413460509

Published by The Master Playrights / Eyre Methuen, London, 1979

About this Item

Three Volumes; One 356 pages, Two 361 pages- ISBN0413450703, Three 411 pages - ISBN0415460908. Minor wear to illustrated covers. Slight toning to pages.

Seller Inventory # 019389

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Coward Plays; One - Hay Fever, The Vortex, Fallen Angels, Easy Virtue; Plays Two; Private Lives, Bitter-Sweet, The Marquise, Post-Mortem; Plays : Three; Deisgn For Living, Cavalcade, Conversation Piece, Tonight at *:30 (I)
• Publisher: The Master Playrights / Eyre Methuen, London
• Publication Date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0413460509
• ISBN 13: 9780413460509
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Theatre

About this title

Synopsis

This first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Cowardand the century were still in their 20s. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley,Coward's first biographer. Hay Fever, a comedy of badmanners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who haveall been invited independently for a weekend at their country housenear Maidenhead. The Vortexwas a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction ontothe stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. Fallen Angels, which is written for two star actresseswas described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - thesecond half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologuebetween the two women. Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic tribute to alost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directlyto the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentallyhypocritical 20s society. "He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur everagain in theatre history" Terence Rattigan