READING NOËL COWARD’S CAVALCADE AS A PROBLEM PLAY

Abstract

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (1899-1973) was a prolific English playwright, actor, director, writer, composer, songwriter, and screenwriter who produced numerous works of plays, musicals, songs, short stories, poetry and a novel. However, Coward is most admired for his drama. He is acknowledged to be a playwright of comedy of manners, musical comedy, and light comedy. The 1930s showed the peak of his theatrical success. Coward stages the realities of the twentieth century life in Britain by means of intellectual, psychological and witty discussion of the sociopolitical issues in everyday life. Although he is known for his comedies, he became successful with one of his noncomic plays: Cavalcade (1931). Coward reveals his sense of the theatre and his stagecraft in the play to thrill, distress and puzzle the audience. The play presents the changes in nation’s spirit and society with the coming of the new age, which bring about domestic, social, political, economic and moral problems for English people. It discusses such problems as the conflict between patriotism and jingoism, Englishness, futility of war, human cost of war, breakdown of the social class system, tension between the lower and upper classes, social mobility, modernisation in life and society, generation gap, maintenance of peace, honour and dignity, and political partisanship. Although the play presents conflicting opinions or situations at the same time, it does not suggest any formula to resolve the contradiction. In this respect, this article aims to analyse Coward’s serious and realistic play as a problem play both in form and content by interpreting the historical events and topical sociopolitical issues of Coward’s time.