Mr. Coward, who has often been held up as himself the prototype of the post-war young man, does not fulfil the popular conception of an irritable and irritating person, dispirited and boneless, who drifts about asking people what he shall do to be saved. If anybody has worked in the past sixteen years, Mr. Coward indisputably has. In spite, however, of the profound dissimilarity between him and the young men whose prototype he is said to be, there is, I think, ample warrant for regarding him as their prototype. More clearly than any of his contemporaries he expressed the harsh and impatient cynicism of the young who grew to early manhood in the War. A world was wrecked, and in it they, weakened by malnutrition and unnerved by strain, had to make a living. They looked at the earth, but, unlike God, did not find it good. An immense flippancy pervaded their generation, and they asserted, with a singular lack of happiness and spirit, that they believed in a good time. But their good time would have been any other generation's bad time. They despaired of life. All standards were dropped. (pp. 2-3)
It was this world which Mr. Coward, with uncanny skill and exactness, portrayed in his early plays. His characters were divided into the clever young and the stupid old, the former being free of conventions, the latter being imprisoned in them. These characters, whether they were old or young, skimmed over the surface of life, sneering at it, the young scoffing at the old, the old snarling at the young. Any person in these plays who tried to see under the surface was said to be stuffy, solemn, a prig. One ate, drank, but was not merry, and tomorrow one died. The fact that Mr. Coward filled his plays with the dismally Bright Young caused many persons, otherwise intelligent, to suppose that he himself was dismally Bright. He became a legendary figure…. The early plays are full of juvenile cruelty which effectually disguised the fundamental fact that their author is an embittered Puritan…. [Audiences] perceived in his revues a moral fury that upset them, partly because it was not expected of him, but chiefly because moral fury seemed irrelevant to revues. Moralists who had come to reproach, remained to wonder. Was this the notorious youth whose flippancies epitomized the spirit of the age? Those songs and sketches about the children of the Ritz had a laugh on the wrong side of the face. Mr. Coward was not applauding the poor little rich girls: he was exposing their futility, their emptiness, their pitiful plight. (pp. 3-4)
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6 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Coward, (Sir) Noël (Pierce) 1899–1973: Critical Essay by St. John Ervine Access Pass.
