<DIV><P>The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and<br>versatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s.</P><br><P>The volume contains<br>his best-loved classic, <I>Private Lives</I>, which was an immeditate hit when<br>it was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and repartee<br>have ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of <I>Bitter-Sweet</I> in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gave<br>me more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Not<br>especially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or its<br>production but as a whole." <I>The Marquise </I>is an "eighteenth century<br>comedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst <I>Post-Mortem</I> is a<br>vilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerful<br>writing.</P></DIV>