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Collected Plays, Vol. 1: Hay Fever, The Vortex, Fallen Angels and Easy Virtue Methuen World Classics Edition
Author(s): Noel Coward (Author), Sheridan Morley (Introduction)
- Publisher: Methuen Drama
- Publication Date: 1 Jan. 1999
- Edition: Methuen World Classics
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 0413460606
- ISBN-13: 9780413460608
Book Description
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
