Hay Fever

Noël Coward’s comedy sends four self-absorbed members of the Bliss family into a country weekend, each having secretly invited a guest without telling the others. Judith, a retired actress who cannot stop performing, her novelist husband David, and their grown children preside over a house where ordinary manners collapse into theatrical scenes staged for their own amusement. The bewildered visitors, expecting flirtation or at least civility, find themselves props in a family that treats real life as one long improvisation. Coward wrote the piece quickly and called it one of his most difficult to play, since almost nothing happens beyond the clash of temperaments. Light, brittle, and very funny, it remains a favourite of the English comic stage. This free PDF and EPUB edition presents the full three-act play.