As a result, Cyrano and Christian craft a third, fictitious human being-blessed with Christian’s face and Cyrano’s voice-who appears to exist, but doesn’t. Cyrano’s words can be manipulated and misattributed. The inadequacy of language-the fact that words, even at their best, only “seem”-is clear during the course of Cyrano and Christian’s seduction of Roxane. He even composes poetry while dueling with an enemy, the Viscount Valvert, in front of a big crowd of onlookers-a clear sign of the way he uses words and outward appearances as weapons. Cyrano uses poetry and witty insults to construct an image of himself as a proud, aggressive, and intimidating man.

At other points in the play, Rostand makes it very clear than Cyrano’s words are another kind of performance. The overall impression is that Cyrano is expressing his real feelings for Roxane, displaying a wise and sensitive soul with which the shallow Christian could never compete.Īnd yet the play also implies that on a certain level, one’s words are no more “real” than one’s face. When Cyrano speaks to Roxane, pretending to be Christian, his voice is hesitant at first, but as his words become more passionate, his voice grows more comfortable. Roxane’s love for Cyrano’s letters seems more “real” than her attraction to Christian’s face, because the former comes dressed in beautiful language, while the latter is only skin-deep. Only the combination of Christian’s face and Cyrano’s words can do the trick.Īt times, Cyrano suggests that words and ideas are a better expression of one’s true nature than are physical appearances. By themselves, neither Christian nor Cyrano could woo Roxane-one is too ugly, and the other is too foolish.

Cyrano, secretly in love with Roxane himself, sends her letters in Christian’s name, and even speaks for Christian. It’s only with the help of Cyrano de Bergerac, an ugly, big-nosed man with a sharp wit and a talent for eloquent turns of phrase, that Christian succeeds in wooing Roxane. Part of the conceit of Cyrano de Bergerac is that Christian de Neuvillette, in spite of his handsome face, is ill-equipped to woo the beautiful Roxane, because he’s not particularly bright: one could say that “deep down” he’s less attractive than his face would suggest. In the course of its five acts, Rostand offers some surprising ideas about the philosophy of appearances, which challenge and sometimes flatly contradict the cliché that “true beauty comes from within.” From the first scene of Act 1-in which patrons gather in a theater to watch a play-within-the-play-it’s clear that Cyrano de Bergerac is a play about acting, appearances, and illusions.

Cyrano de bergerac pdf