Background
The title of the play is taken from Shelley's poem "To a Skylark". After his London office and flat had been destroyed in the Blitz, Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in 1941 during a holiday that he took with the actress Joyce Carey at Portmeirion on the coast of Snowdonia in Wales. In his autobiography, Coward said that he wrote the play in five days.
During World War II, before Russia and the U.S. joined forces with the Allies, Britain was suffering severe casualties and facing German bombing attacks at home. Coward felt that British audiences would want to view an escapist comedy such as Blithe Spirit. The play provoked a small outcry at the time of its first performances, as it was seen to be possibly making fun of death at the height of the war; however, such objections were quickly forgotten, and the play went on to set British box-office records. The subject was timely for many, because some who wished to contact their loved ones who had died in the war were turning to spiritualism. The play's run of 1,997 consecutive performances set a record for non-musical plays in the West End that was not surpassed until 1957, by The Mousetrap.
Coward repeats one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the central character tiptoes out as the curtain falls – a device that he also used in Present Laughter, Private Lives and Hay Fever.
Read more about this topic: Blithe Spirit (play)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)