Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac

Excerpt:<br />The phenomenal success of "Cyrano de Bergerac" is undoubtedly one of the most important literary events of the last quarter of a century. It at once placed Edmond Rostand, a young man of twenty-eight, at the head of the small band of French dramatic writers, all men of marked ability, Maurice Donnay, Georges de Porto-Riche, François de Curel, Paul Hervieu, Henri Lavedan, etc., who had been struggling for supremacy since the disappearance of the two great masters of modern French comedy, Émile Augier and Alexandre Dumas, fils. There was no hesitation on the part of the public. It was at once recognised that what had just been produced upon the stage was not simply better than what had been seen for a long time, but was also, to a certain extent, of a different nature. And the verdict rendered by the French public in December, 1897, has since then been approved by readers and theatre-goers in nearly every one of the countries belonging to Western civilisation.