Editing Blithe Spirit (play) (section)

==Background==
The title of the play is taken from [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]]'s poem "[[To a Skylark]]", ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert").<ref>Nightingale, Benedict. [http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:LTIB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0F924C3EF6E6CCA3&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "Coward's high-flyer lays an egg"], ''The Times'', 19 June 1997, p.  37</ref> For some time before 1941 Coward had been thinking of a comedy about ghosts. His first thoughts centred on an old house in Paris, haunted by spectres from different centuries, with the comedy arising from their conflicting attitudes, but he could not get the plot to work in his mind.<ref name=p89>Payn, p. 89</ref> He knew that in wartime Britain, with death a constant presence, there would be some objection to a comedy about ghosts,<ref>Hoare, p. 321</ref> but his firm view was that as the story would be thoroughly heartless, "you can't sympathise with any of them. If there ''was'' a heart it would be a sad story."<ref name=p89/>

After his London office and flat had been destroyed in the [[The Blitz|Blitz]], Coward took a short holiday with the actress [[Joyce Carey]] at [[Portmeirion]] on the coast of [[Snowdonia]] in Wales. She was writing a play about [[John Keats|Keats]], and he was still thinking about his ghostly light comedy. He later recounted:
{{blockquote|We sat on the beach with our backs against the sea wall and discussed my idea exclusively for several hours. Keats, I regret to say, was not referred to. By lunchtime the title had emerged together with the names of the characters, and a rough, very rough, outline of the plot. At seven-thirty the next morning I sat, with the usual nervous palpitations, at my typewriter. ... I fixed the paper into the machine and started. ''Blithe Spirit''. A Light Comedy in Three Acts.

For six days I worked from eight to one each morning and from two to seven each afternoon. On Friday evening, May ninth, the play was finished and, disdaining archness and false modesty, I will admit that I knew it was witty, I knew it was well constructed, and I also knew that it would be a success.<ref>Coward (1954), p. 211</ref>}}