Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew up… in France in the early 17th century.
Living… as a renowned swordsman, with one glaring physical feature. Cyrano happens to have a rather immense nose, something he tries to embrace publicly with a little panache. But secretly, he finds the subject of his nose to be a touchy subject.
Profession… a sword fighter as a member of the French elite fighting force, the Cadets of the Gascogne. Not only is he skilled with a blade, he's even more prodigious with his tongue. You insult his nose? He can write poetry elaborating dozens of better, creative insults you should have come up with.
Interests… taking care of his fellow Cadets, reading and writing poetry, and being a helpless romantic. While Cyrano is immensely talented in whatever he does, he has a since of humility to him as well.
Relationship Status… in love with his cousin Roxanne. The problem? Roxanne is madly in love with Christian, a bumbling but handsome newcomer to the Gascogne Cadets. Cyrano feeds lines of love in order to help him win the heart of Roxanne. After successfully helping him, he feels briefly elated: "I'm in love... but it was meant to be! The finest-looking one there is! I feel triumphant... forgetful... and I suddenly see the side of my face shaded off the garden wall."
Challenge… helping Christian woo Roxanne without her finding out. But does he even sincerely want to? Cyrano, an honorable yet self-deprecating fellow, feels duty-bound to help Roxanne be with the one she loves, no matter who he is. However, can he find happiness by experiencing her love vicariously through Roxanne's responses to Christian?
Personality… witty, poetic, and massively insecure over his large protrusion of a nose. Beyond that, he's the bravest fighter of them all. However, despite his skills and brilliance, he's incredibly lonely.
Get to Know him in...
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Embarrassed by his large nose, a romantic poet/soldier romances his cousin by proxy.
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Regarded as one of the greatest dramas ever written, Cyrano de Bergerac is the story of the silver-tongued soldier whose unfortunate looks drive him to woo his love by speaking for his handsome but dull-witted rival.
Cyrano de Bergerac occupies a unique place in the modern theater. Deliberately disavowing realism and contemporary relevance, Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece represents a turning back in both time and spirit to an earlier age of high adventure and soaring idealism. Its magnificent hero, Cyrano—noble of soul and grotesque in appearance, gallant Gascon soldier, brilliant wit, and timid lover, alternately comic, heroic, tragic—represents one of the most challenging of all acting roles in its complexity and mercurial changes of mood. From its original production to the present day, Cyrano de Bergerac has enjoyed a charmed existence on the stage, its unflagging pace of action and eloquence of language enchanting critics and public alike. Here, in a superlative translation, is the ultimate triumph of the great French romantic tradition—a work which, in the words of the French critic Lemaître, “prolongs, unites and blends…three centuries of comic fantasy and moral grace.”
Translated by Lowell Bair
With an Introduction by Eteel Lawson
and an Afterword by Cynthia B. Kerr
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José Ferrer won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portayal of the swordsman-poet using his silver tongue to woo the woman he loves for another man. Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play is a fictionalization of his life that follows the broad outlines of it. The entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the Alexandrine format, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. It is also meticulously researched, down to the names of the members of the Académie française and the dames précieuses glimpsed before the performance in the first scene. The play has been translated and performed many times, and is responsible for introducing the word "panache" into the English language.
