# Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
**Cyrano de Bergerac** is a five-act play in verse by the French dramatist [Edmond Rostand](https://www.edgepedia.org/edmond-rostand), designated on its title page a *comédie héroïque* (heroic comedy) and first performed at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris on 28 December 1897[1](https://gutenberg.org/files/1256/1256-h/1256-h.htm) • [2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac). It remains arguably the most popular play of the French theater[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Genre and form | *Comédie héroïque* in five acts, written in alexandrines[1](https://gutenberg.org/files/1256/1256-h/1256-h.htm) • [3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html) |
| Premiere | 28 December 1897, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, Paris[1](https://gutenberg.org/files/1256/1256-h/1256-h.htm) |
| Opening reception | Fifty curtain calls; the troupe played it continuously for two years, besides provincial tours[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac) |
| Title role | Built with the actor Constant Coquelin; the role grew to 1,432 lines of verse[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac) |
| Historical basis | Freely inspired by the 17th-century libertine writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655)[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html) |
| Reach | Staged in London, Berlin, and other major cities by 1898; thousandth performance in 1913; more than 4,000 performances in Paris alone during the 20th century[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac) |
| English legacy | The first English translation appeared in 1898[5](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en) |
## Historical background: Rostand and the real Cyrano
The play is freely inspired by the life and work of Savinien de [Cyrano de Bergerac](https://www.edgepedia.org/cyrano-de-bergerac) (1619–1655), a 17th-century libertine writer who liked to joke about his own voluminous nose[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html). The historical Cyrano served as a musketeer and earned the nickname *Démon de la bravoure* (demon of daring) before an injury turned him toward burlesque literature[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html). In 1654 he was gravely injured passing under a scaffolding and died the following year at age 36, leaving an unfinished work[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html).
Rostand drew on a figure who had been largely forgotten when the play was published[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac). The stage character keeps the historical man's nose, his soldiering, and his verbal daring, and combines action with intellect and impetuousness with sensitivity[6](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095656497). The play is set in the reign of [Louis XIII](https://www.edgepedia.org/louis-xiii) and the era of the Three Musketeers[5](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en).
## Synopsis
The action opens at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris in 1640, where Cyrano, a member of the Cadets de Gascogne, disrupts a performance by silencing the actor Montfleury, then wins a duel after delivering the famous tirade on his own nose[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac).
The central device follows. Cyrano, eloquent but convinced his face makes him unlovable, ghost-writes the love letters of the handsome but inarticulate Christian to the woman they both love, Roxane; she falls in love with the voice and secretly marries Christian to escape the count de Guiche[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html). Christian dies at the siege of Arras, and Roxane withdraws to a convent[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html). Some years later the dying Cyrano visits her and reveals the whole truth[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html).
## Genre and verse craft
Rostand wrote his "heroic comedy" unfashionably, in verse, at a moment when the French stage was dominated by naturalism, introspective and psychological theater, and satire; *Ubu roi* had been published the year before[5](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en) • [2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac). The label *comédie héroïque* marks the hybrid: a work of comic energy and spectacle that returns to a heroic past of derring-do and uncomplicated love, standing as a counterblast to drawing-room comedy and naturalist realism[6](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095656497). This very opposition may partly explain its success, because it resurrects at the end of the 19th century the world of romantic theater: impossible love, the poet's curse, reference to the past, and versification[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac).
The play is in five acts and in alexandrines[3](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html). Rostand involved Constant Coquelin closely in the writing, reading him the text at nearly daily stages, and the actor kept asking for more until the role reached 1,432 verses[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac).
## Original production and early reception
The premiere was a triumph beyond all expectations: there were fifty curtain calls, and the troupe played the piece without interruption for two years, not counting provincial tours[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac). The opening night fell at the height of the Dreyfus Affair[5](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en). The critic Francisque Sarcey hailed the play as renewing dramatic literature, freeing the stage from the "Scandinavian fogs" of Ibsenite drama and the brutalities of realist theater[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac).
By the following year the play had been staged in London, Berlin, and other major cities of Europe and America; the thousandth performance took place in 1913[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac). After Coquelin's death in 1909, Charles Le Bargy took over the role, with the press noting less irony and more sensitivity in his interpretation[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac). Even the famous nose was an engineering problem: after much research, the ideal nose for the premiere was made with diachylon, a plaster used in medicine[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac).
## Themes and critical interpretation
The traditional theme of impossible love becomes, in Rostand's handling, a triumph of appearance over reality in which all the characters go astray[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac).
French academic criticism long shunned, disdained, or ignored the play, criticizing it as "chauvinistic" and "melodramatic"[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac). This verdict coexisted with recognition of the play's virtuosic dramatic construction, which mixes mise en abyme (a story mirroring itself within itself), grand spectacle, and intimate scenes[2](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac).
## Adaptations and notable stagings
The play has been performed in film versions by [Gérard Depardieu](https://www.edgepedia.org/gerard-depardieu) and by [Steve Martin](https://www.edgepedia.org/steve-martin)[6](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095656497). On the French stage, three landmark productions are often contrasted: Claude Barma's mythic televised reconstitution, which used the resources of *dramatique télévisée* to recreate the 17th century in period detail; Denis Podalydès's 2006 staging at the [Comédie-Française](https://www.edgepedia.org/comedie-francaise), with sets by Éric Ruf and costumes by Christian Lacroix, a modernized "total spectacle" and homage to actors, revived until 2017; and Dominique Pitoiset's staging, inspired by Brecht and his principle of distancing, austere and deliberately estranging, centered on the power of Rostand's language[7](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/oeuvre/edmond-rostand/cyrano-de-bergerac.html) • [4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac). The Molière award given to the Comédie-Française troupe in 2007 confirmed that *Cyrano de Bergerac* had definitively become a *pièce de troupe*, a repertory piece for the company as a whole[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac).
In English, the first translation appeared in 1898[5](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en). [Christopher Fry](https://www.edgepedia.org/christopher-fry)'s acclaimed translation into "chiming couplets" represents the homage of one verse dramatist to another[5](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en).
## What has changed since 2023
For its 2024–2025 season, the Comédie-Française mounted a new *Cyrano* directed by Emmanuel Daumas, with a reduced troupe of twelve actors and actresses[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac). The specialist production archive Les Archives du spectacle records further 2024 stagings, including *Cyrano* after Edmond Rostand, and a 2027 production listed as *Cyrano d'après Edmond Rostand*[8](https://lesarchivesduspectacle.net/oe/265-Cyrano-de-Bergerac).
## Premiere date
The play's own title page gives 28 December 1897 as the date of the first performance[1](https://gutenberg.org/files/1256/1256-h/1256-h.htm). The Comédie-Française and Les Archives du spectacle give 27 December 1897[4](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac) • [8](https://lesarchivesduspectacle.net/oe/265-Cyrano-de-Bergerac).
## References
1. [Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand, full text, Project Gutenberg](https://gutenberg.org/files/1256/1256-h/1256-h.htm)
2. [Cyrano de Bergerac, BnF Essentiels](https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/19e-siecle-1/e7bb7905-4ec3-45c9-bb63-0bd87831aef0-theatre-19e-siecle/article/80a29c22-93a0-418b-b51c-418ceafceb5c-cyrano-bergerac)
3. [Théâtre en acte – Cyrano de Bergerac : présentation, Réseau Canopé / Éduthèque](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/cyrano-de-bergerac-presentation.html)
4. [Cyrano de Bergerac, Comédie-Française](https://www.comedie-francaise.fr/2024-2025/cyrano-de-bergerac)
5. [Cyrano de Bergerac: A Heroic Comedy in Five Acts, Oxford World's Classics](https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/node/5817?language=en)
6. [Cyrano de Bergerac, Oxford Reference](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095656497)
7. [Théâtre en acte – Œuvre : Cyrano de Bergerac, Réseau Canopé / Éduthèque](https://www.reseau-canope.fr/edutheque-theatre-en-acte/oeuvre/edmond-rostand/cyrano-de-bergerac.html)
8. [Cyrano de Bergerac, Les Archives du spectacle](https://lesarchivesduspectacle.net/oe/265-Cyrano-de-Bergerac)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Theater and dance › Playwrights and dramatists › Continental European playwrights › French playwrights*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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