The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill andversatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s.

The volume containshis best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit whenit was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and reparteehave ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gaveme more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Notespecially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or itsproduction but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth centurycomedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is avilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerfulwriting.