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It is possible that most of the Coward works are perishably dated. But he knows the theatre as few have known it. What he may do with this knowledge later, none can say. Although his excursions into serious drama are represented to date by The Vortex, Cavalcade and Post Mortem —none of them deathless—most of his fellow subjects would call Noel Coward the First Englishman of the British Stage. That opinion was shared by hundreds of U. S. citizens who, in a cold drizzle, formed a block-long ticket queue in front of the theatre four days before last week's opening in Manhattan—a Broadway phenomenon unseen since the Depression. If accomplishment counts for anything, Noel Coward would appear to have knuckled out a fairly workmanlike design for living himself.