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.