Love and Marriage

I’ll Leave It to You, written when he was twenty and with a part for himself, was about success of the kind that interested Coward. Although the plot was taken over ready-made it shows ability with comic dialogue and situation. The Rat Trap explores, with astonishing maturity, a marital conflict of tension between intimacy and public success. The Young Idea owes something to Shaw’s example and intervention. The play makes three assumptions about love and marriage. Fallen Angels shocked by using female rather than male infidelity as material for a triangular comedy in which Julia and Jane’s friendship, rivalry and jealousy are entertainingly depicted. Coward is by now a master of dialogue and dramatic situation.