Theatre
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand · 1897
Opening lines
Le Portier
Holà ! vos quinze sols !
Hey! Your fifteen sous!
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Paris, 1640. Cyrano de Bergerac, swordsman and poet, suffers from an outsized nose that he will not tolerate being mocked: at the Hôtel de Bourgogne theatre, he drives an actor off the stage, then fights a duel with a viscount while composing verses. He secretly loves his cousin Roxane. She confesses to him that she loves Christian, a handsome cadet who is unable to speak of love. Cyrano agrees to help his rival and lends him his voice and his letters.
Context
The play was premiered on 28 December 1897 at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, with Constant Coquelin in the title role, and appeared in volume form from Charpentier and Fasquelle in 1898. Written in verse, mostly alexandrines, it borrows its hero from Savinien de Cyrano, a seventeenth-century writer, whose life it blends with invention. In English, it has been translated notably by Brian Hooker and by Anthony Burgess.
Who it is for
Five acts in verse in which the action scarcely lets up; no need to know the writer whose name the hero bears.
Prizes and reception
On the opening night, the audience applauded for a long time after the curtain fell; Coquelin played the role more than four hundred times in that theatre.
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