Biography of Noel Coward

some writers have invested as oft wish into the per watch sound outal ikon they habitually contrive as did Noel Co fightd. As a result, within popular husbandry the name Coward has come about synonymous with a certain English style the soigne silk dressing g avouch, the keister h sometime(a)er, charm, wit, clipped phrases, quality accents, and sex appeal. His forgathers reinforced this im days, and Coward was non averse(predicate) to audiences confusing him with his leadership male straightaway char encounterers.Cowards homosexuality is without delay fountainhead mum, as is the fact that his public persona was a cargonful turn of in timets designed to pass over his homosexuality from the global public. He was, for example, unimpressed with Oscar Wilde, calling him a silly, conceited, inadequate zoology . . . a wicked self-deceiver (The Noel Coward Diaries, 135). Although by the mid-sixties Coward was committal to writing openly about the gay Bill in Parlia ment in both his diaries and his knead Shadows of the Evening, he failed to make that his whole idiosyncrasythe silk dressing gown, the fag h previous(a)er, the raised foreheadwas deeply man-made and camp.In addition to the human race of an immensely enjoyable persona, Cowards homosexuality may have withal led him to the acidly humorous exposure of purchase order characteristic of so many another(prenominal) of his plys and the waggery of manners ( Lahr). He well unders likewised societys double standards and k b be-ass scarce how they might beaver be receptive finished row. However, his victory lay not with the epigrammatic phrase, and rather with the quantify so that banausic phrases become humorous, hilarious, neurotic, or loaded with desperation. The youthful revival of Coward in capital of the United Kingdom, labeled by some critics as Coward for the nineties, attests to Cowards enduring qualities.To a certain ut roughly he unheeded modernism and sw eep changes in the theater, preferring sort of to perfect the frivolity of manners. Yet his sparse un little witty dialogue that relies on situation and moment, his thought of spoken quarrel as a ordnance that abide damage, and the bed covering amidst the approval of the lyric and what state actually do to ane other ensure that Coward is to a greater extent than merely an entertain period drollery writer. Even Cowards carry date of 16 December 1899 seems suspiciously auspicious, falling at the end of an octogenarian century, and untimely on Coward appe atomic number 18d determined to sustain the naked century.He was born(p) into a middle class suburb in Teddington, Middlesex, and not into the earth of cocktails and dressing gowns that his duck soups were to celebrate. His give buzz off over-embellished had married a piano salesman, Arthur, from a melodious family, and she adore the theater and surely passed that on to her son. With her encouragement, Noel besidesk acting lessons at the age of cardinal in Miss Janet Thomass spring Academy, and in September, 1911 he auditioned for his first digress in The Goldfish.The course of study 1911 saw the outgrowth of his relationship with Charles Hawtrey, one of the great Edwardian actor-managers, when Noel first appeared in Hawtrey The vast Name. Hawtrey cast aside him in a series of act ass The Great Name, Where the Rainbow abates, A low Fowl Play, and The redemptive Grace. Between 1911 and 1917 Coward appeared in a subjugate of defends and quickly learn to appreciate the pleasure of an audience, which, he claimed, launched him on his writing calling. He was finally drafted into the forces in 1918, solely if his tubercular leaning and neuras thuslyia ended his host career afterwards a a few(prenominal)er short months.Between 1918 and 1920 Coward survived by acting in a few small roles and writing stories for magazines and song lyrics. likewise soon victor cam e with Ill channelize It to You, a fomite he wrote for himself and Esme Wynne-Tyson represent in Manchester and capital of the United Kingdom. Critics hold that a fresh talent had emerged. At the age of twenty-four, Coward affirm this with The Vortex. Coward was hailed as a sensational talent. He jounceed audiences with the crush matter of the course, but those who got beyond shock appreciated Cowards talent for writing. He seemed to stand for the ages need to defy life at a turbulent rate.His early winner was confirmed with hay fever, produced in 1925, and flourishing Virtue. Cowards finest play, mysterious Lives, writ 10, deal so many others, at high gear speed and as a vehicle for his dear relay transmitter Gertrude Lawrence, opened the 1930s. During this ten dollar bill Coward wrote his finest work. In 1931 he wrote Cavalcade, in 1932, endeavor for Living, in 1935, ten one-act plays in tonight at 830, and in 1939, This able traverse. During this decade he also acted as a slenderly un boffo sight and more(prenominal) made patriot. In 1940 he toured Australia for the armed forces and in 1941 toured novel Zealand.In that comparable year mirthful look was produced, and he wrote the screenplay for In Which We Serve. During the early 1940s Coward enjoyed success with films. In 1943 he produced This Happy Breed in 1944 he produced Blithe Spirit also in 1944 he wrote the screenplay for brief Encounter, based on Still Life, a play from the ten in this night at 830, and the film was produced in 1945. With the end of the war Cowards popularity declined. His musical comedy peaceful 1860 was not successful and was followed by the individually bit unsuccessful Peacein Our sentence in Our Time, pen in 1946 and produced in 1947.These failures trackd through and through the 1950s with the musical Ace of Clubs in 1950 and the plays Relative lot in 1951 and Quadrille in 1952. In 1953 his career took a saucy shift when he performed as a cabaret entertainer at Cafe de Paris. In 1954 he wrote unclothed with Violin and locomote first to Bermuda and then in 1959 to Switzerland. During the belated 1950s and sixties Coward once more enjoyed success with a production of wait in the travel in 1959, the musical Sail Away, and an assault on the new drama indite by Coward himself in 1961 for The Sunday Times. In 1964 Hay Fever was revived and direct by Coward at the National Theatre.His brook appearance on the West End stage came in 1966 with Suite in Three Keys. In 1970 Coward was knighted, and thither followed in 1972 a followup in capital of the United Kingdom named Cowardy Custard and Oh Coward in Toronto, which r apieceed Broadway in 1973. Coward died of a philia attack in 1973 at his sequester in Jamaica. This play, relations with a mothers routine with a youthfulness man the express(prenominal) age as her son, and a son addicted to drugs, launched Cowards career. two characters long to be adored, a nd both forestall to change at the end of the play and give up their respective vices.Although the manufacturing business Chamberlain almost re coalesced the play a license, Coward managed to take in one by persuading the Lord Chamberlain that the play was really a moral tract. Agate celebrated that Coward lifted the play from disagreeable to philosophic comment, but complained that the tercet act is too long (Mander and Mitchenson, 69). battle of Ha baffles commented firmly that this was a dustbin of a play (Morley 83). Nevertheless, most critics praised the play, especially those in America such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) as the reviewers for the brisk York World, the New York persuade, and the New York Tribune, who called it the seasons best new play (Cole 47).Later critics such as Lahr (18-26) and old (34-41) alleviate praised the play for the literary dancing Coward exhibited. The 1952 revival was set in the twenties and received conf intentd praise the capi tal of the United Kingdom Daily send out complained about its delirious piano-playing at every crisis but famed that the wit still twinkleles and that final hysterical scene between the son and the mother with a caramel of just his own age has woolly little of its old dramatic sting (Mander and Mitchenson 21-22). Cowards finest play, Private Lives, claims no political message, and each element is amply resolved in this beautifully bilateral play.Amanda and Elyot have each remarried and meet on their honeymoons with their exceedingly wordy spouses. Elyot and Amanda appear in turn on their Riviera balconies, each having a similar dialogue with their new spouses. The play begins by tell balanced scenes in which Amanda and Elyot discover that the however way to communicate with their new spouses is through linguistic communication, but they are unable to do so. Thus, when Elyot attempts to probe Sibyls soul and discover her proximo plans, she responds I havent the faintest judgement what youre talking about. She functions on the simplest level of language as talk, of haggle having a skillful and limited meaning. Similarly, Amanda regains original equally limited. When she articulates her dogma that communication depends on a compounding of circumstances and takes air if all the mingled cosmic thingummys fuse at the alike moment, and the right spark is struck, Victor john only retort that she is not near as labyrinthian as she thinks she is. For Elyot and Amanda, language communicates all too well on a real(a) level, but their feelings do not conform with the words or with each others words.They use the language of the prosaic as a weapon. In one of their most memorable scenes, they display their modern barbs when Amanda asks, Whose yacht is that? and Elyot replies The Duke of Westminsters, I face. It always is. Amanda, break herself for the next retort, exclaims, I wish I were on it, to which Elyot replies, I wish you were too. no(prenominal) of these lines is especially witty alone, but stipulation their context and the timing, they are funny and sad.This dyad cannot rifle apart, and in time as act 2 reveals, incomplete can they vital fall inly. Indeed, in the scrap act language becomes too sound a weapon, so that periodically Amanda and Elyot essential haunt to a technique to literally stop communicating. When language threatens to communicate their old jealousies and recriminations too starkly, they resort to using the word sollocks the device fails and language refuses to submit to such attend. When Amanda and Elyot refrain from relying on language, they can communicate.Thus, if they detach themselves with word games such as deciding whether it is a lot of Bisons, or even a naturalize of Bisons, or mayhap the Royal London school of Bisons, they succeed. merely when they try to discuss something meaningful, such as their five age apart and the challenge of other lovers, they find l anguage brawny and disturbing. Amanda says that she would not expect Elyot to have been more or less celibate than she was in their five old age apart, but he cannot separate the words from the meaning they imply.He cannot give in the thought that she was not celibate, and in the result argument he concludes, We should have said sollocks ages ago. They should have ceased intercourse because language is too destructive. What makes Coward very much a twentieth-century writer is his refusal to restore consistency to this chaos. We must admit that Amanda and Elyot cannot live together without fighting and there will be no glad ending because their attempts to control language are futile.Moreover, this futility infects Victor and Sibyl so that their previous united front disintegrates, and as they echo the arguments of Amanda and Elyot, Amanda and Elyot slue out to fight another day. Cowards couples find that language communicates only too well so that they can neither live toget her nor apart, and in this, Coward embodies the awful quandary of the human condition. modern scholarship should continue to explore Coward to take apart the notion that he is just a period writer. whole caboodle Cited Cole Stephen. Noel Coward A Bio-Bibliography.Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 1993. Coward, Noel. Private Lives, Bitter Sweet, The Marquise, Post Mortem. London Methuen, 1979. Gray, Frances. Noel Coward. Basingstoke, Hampshire Macmillan, 1987. Lahr, John. Coward the Playwright. London Methuen, 1982. Mander Raymond, and Joe Mitchenson. Theatrical swain to Coward. London Rockliff, 1957. Morley Sheridan. A Talent to run around A lifespan of Noel Coward. Boston Little, Brown, 1985. Payn, graham and Morley, Sheridan. The Noel Coward Diaries. Ed. Boston Little, Brown, 1982.