Buy on Amazon
View on Biblioguides
How does reading a play compare to reading a novel? A novel fills in all the scenery and action around the dialogue, plus some narration, so a complete story is presented. A play depends on how the actors speak and what the stage shows, so it is missing some of what we expect in a novel. Therefore, in one sense, reading a play is inferior to reading a novel. However, Shakespeare’s plays are considered a triumph of Western civilization and we read them with enjoyment all the time. One way to read a play is to have more than one person participating, each taking several parts, and dramatically reading aloud so that the play is essentially performed right in the home. One could also do this with a novel but it is better to do it with a much shorter work. In our family, we had five or six copies of the complete Winnie the Pooh stories, so that we could read them aloud as a family, taking parts and acting them out, verbally. The Paddington stories are also great for this family activity (see my review).
All this is by way of introduction to a play that I would highly recommend: Cyrano de Bergerac, written by Edmond Rostand. Cyrano was a historical figure in France in the mid-1600s. He was a rollicking, sword-fighting, literary, humorous, dramatic figure of a man, in the same time in which the book The Three Musketeers was set. We actually know much of his life. In the 1890s, Edmond Rostand, who was not yet thirty years old, wrote the play entitled Cyrano de Bergerac, which quickly became a classic.
The three key characters in this play are Cyrano himself, a brave, dashing, articulate man who is cursed with a very large nose and so considers himself to be incapable of getting a woman to love and marry him. There is Roxane, the woman that Cyrano loves but who only sees him as a friend. To complete the love triangle, there is Christian, a good man and a good soldier, a friend of Cyrano’s who is very handsome but who becomes tongue-tied when speaking to Roxane, whom he loves. Christian asks Cyrano to supply the words and voice as Christian woos Roxane from the darkness under her balcony. Because of these beautiful words, Roxane falls in love with Christian. When Christian and Cyrano are called to war, it is Cyrano who writes wonderful love letters for Christian to send back to his Roxane. When Christian does not make it home from war, it is Cyrano who is faithful to his memory, his secret, and to his Roxane through many years. I won’t give away the ending but it is sad and happy at the same time and very beautiful. The play is full of humor and drama and is a delight to read and to see. Reading a play first enriches the seeing of a good performance on stage. Since the version reviewed here is a modern English translation from French, the play is a lot easier to read than one of Shakespeare’s plays.
The story of Cyrano de Bergerac has become part of Western culture and its theme and main plot elements have been incorporated into many other dramatic and humorous works. There is a wonderful movie version of the play, made in 1950 starring Jose Ferrer, for which he won an Academy Award as best actor. The edition in the Plumfield Library is a beautifully bound and illustrated edition published by The Heritage Press.