Edmond Rostand

`Tonight When I make my sweeping bow at heaven's gate, One thing I shall still possess, at any rate, Unscathed, something outlasting mortal flesh, And that is ... My panache.' The first English translation of Cyrano de Bergerac, in 1898, introduced t he word panache into the English language. This single word summed up Rostand's rejection of the social realism which dominated late nineteenth-century theatre. He wrote his `heroic comedy', unfashionably, in verse, and set it in the reign of Louis X III and the Three Musketeers. Based on the life of a little known writer, Rostand's hero has become a figure of theatrical legend: Cyrano, with the nose of a clown and the soul of a poet, is by turns comic and sad, as reckless in love as in war, and never at a loss for words. Audiences immediately took him to their hearts, and since the triumphant opening night in December 1897 - at the height of the Dreyfus Affair - the play has never lost its appeal. The text is accompanied by notes and a full introduction which sets the play in its literary and historical context. Christopher Fry's acclaimed translation into `chiming couplets' represents the homage of one verse dramatist to another.

Pourfendeur du vice et amoureux timide, éloquent et muet, homme de l'ombre et de la lumire, Cyrano possde le nez le plus célbre de la littérature. Habité par l'amour des mots, anime par le refus de toute compromission, héros romantique qui rive d'amour et de batailles, il nous séduit et nous enseigne avec panache qu'il importe seulement de rver, rire, passer, tre seul, tre libre "."