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 Burgundy. 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 Burgundy However, he has an extremely 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 musician. Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. 1.1 Act I – A Performance at the Hôtel Burgundy.The two most famous English translations are those by Brian Hooker and Anthony Burgess. Cyrano (the character) is in fact famed for his panache, and the play ends with him saying "My panache" just before his death. The play has been translated and performed many times, and 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. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play is a fictionalization of his life that follows the broad outlines of it. Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand.