
Cyrano disrupts the play, forces Montfleury off stage, and compensates the manager for the loss of admission fees. The play "Clorise" begins with Montfleury's entrance. After Lignière leaves, Christian intercepts a pickpocket and, in return for his freedom, the pickpocket tells Christian of a plot against Lignière. Meanwhile, Ragueneau and Le Bret are expecting Cyrano de Bergerac, who has banished the actor Montfleury from the stage for a month. Lignière recognizes her as Roxane, and he tells Christian about her and the Count de Guiche's scheme to marry her off to the compliant Viscount Valvert. Christian de Neuvillette, a handsome new cadet, arrives with Lignière, a drunkard who he hopes will identify the young woman with whom he has fallen in love. Members of the audience slowly arrive, representing a cross-section of Parisian society from pickpockets to nobility. The play opens in Paris, 1640, in the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. This doubt prevents him from expressing his love for his distant cousin, the beautiful and intellectual Roxane, as he believes that his ugliness would prevent him the "dream of being loved by even an ugly woman."Īct I – A Performance at the Hôtel de Bourgogne However, he has an obnoxiously large nose, which causes him to doubt himself. In addition to being a remarkable duelist, he is a gifted, joyful poet and is also a musical artist. Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. The most famous English translations are those by Brian Hooker, Anthony Burgess, and Louis Untermeyer. The character of Cyrano himself makes reference to "my panache" in the play.

The play has been translated and performed many times, and it is responsible for introducing the word panache into the English language. 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 entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the classical alexandrine form, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. The play is a fictionalisation following the broad outlines of Cyrano de Bergerac's life.

Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand.
