Edmond Rostand

For more information on Edmond-Eugène Rostand, visit Britannica.com.

Rostand, Edmond (1868–1918), playwright. The romantic French dramatist is known in this country primarily for one work, his masterpiece, Cyrano de Bergerac (1898). His L'Aiglon is recalled largely as a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt, who included it in her American tours. Much was expected of his Chanticleer, which Charles Frohman offered in 1911 with Maude Adams as star, but the production was a costly failure. Also, it was Rostand's Les Romantics that provided the basic plot for the long‐running musical The Fantasticks (1960).

Rostand, Edmond (1868-1918). French playwright who marks the reaction against the seriousness and gloom of Naturalist drama. At their best his plays have warmth, charm, wit, and poetic feeling, but they can be contrived and sentimental. Les Romanesques (1894), with its version of Romeo and Juliet, and La Princesse lointaine (1895), with its revival of the troubadours, are winsome but cloying. His great success is Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), a swashbuckling romantic drama, brilliantly ingenious in its versifying and still exciting and touching in performance. Chantecler (1910), an allegory using masks of birds and beasts, is an ambitious experiment.

[S. Beynon John]

Quotes:

"A kiss, when all is said, what is it? A rosy dot placed on the I in loving; Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear."

"What would you have me do?Search out some powerful patronage, and beLike crawling ivy clinging to a tree?No thank you. Dedicate, like all the others,Verses to plutocrats, while caution smothersWhatever might offend my lord and master?No thank you. Kneel until my knee-caps fester,Bend my back until I crack my spine,And scratch anothers back if hell scratch mine?No thank you. Dining out to curry favour,Meeting the influential till I slaver,Suiting my style to what the critics wantWith slavish copy of the latest cant?No thanks! Ready to jump through any hoopTo be the great man of a little group?Be blown off course, with madrigals for sails,By the old women sighing through their veils?Labouring to write a line of such good breedingIts only fault isthat its not worth reading?To ingratiate myself, abject with fear,And fawn and flatter to avoid a sneer?No thanks, no thanks, no thanks! But just to sing,Dream, laugh, and take my tilt of wing,To cock a snook whenever I shall choose,To fight for yes and no, come win or lose,To travel without thought of fame or fortuneWherever I care to go to under the moon!Never to write a line that hasnt comeDirectly from my heart: and so, with someModesty, to tell myself: My boy,Be satisfied with a flower, a fruit, the joyOf a single leaf, so long as it was grownIn your own garden. Then, if success is wonBy any chance, you have nothing to render toA hollow Caesar: the merit belongs to you. In short, I wont be a parasite; Ill beMy own intention, stand alone and free,And suit my voice to what my own eyes see!"

Edmond Rostand
Born Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand April 1, 1868(1868-04-01) Marseille, France Died 2 December 1918 (aged 50) Paris, France Occupation Poet, playwright Nationality French Spouse Rosemonde Gérard Child(ren) Jean Rostand Maurice Rostand
Information
Magnum opus	Cyrano de Bergerac L'Aiglon

Statue dedicated to Edmond Rostand in Cambo-les-Bains

Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (1 April 1868 – 2 December 1918) was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century. Another of Rostand's works, Les Romanesques, was adapted to the musical comedy, The Fantasticks.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Personal life 2 References 3 External links

Biography

Early years

Rostand was born in Marseille, France, into a wealthy and cultured Provençal family. His father was an economist and a poet, a member of the Marseille Academy and the Institut de France. Rostand studied literature, history, and philosophy at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, France.

His first play, a burlesque, Les romanesques was produced on 21 May 1894 at the Theatre Francais. He took the motive of his second piece, La Princesse lointaine (Theatre de la Renaissance, 5 April 1895), from the story of the troubadour Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli. The part of Melissande was created by Sarah Bernhardt, who also was the original Photine of La Samaritaine (Theatre de la Renaissance, 14 April 1897), a Biblical drama in three scenes taken from the gospel story of the woman of Samaria.

The production of his heroic comedy of Cyrano de Bergerac (28 December 1897, Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin), with Benoît-Constant Coquelin in the title-role, was a triumph. No such enthusiasm for a drama in verse had been known since the days of Hugo's Hernani. The play was quickly translated into English, German, Russian and other European languages. For his hero he had drawn on French 17th-century history.

In L'Aiglon he chose a subject from Napoleonic legend, suggested probably by Henri Welschinger's Roi de Rome, 1811-32 (1897), which contained much new information about the unhappy life of the Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I, and Marie Louise, under the surveillance of Metternich at the Schönbrunn Palace. L'Aiglon in six acts and in verse, was produced (15 March 1900) by Sarah Bernhardt at her own theatre, she herself undertaking the part of the Duke of Reichstadt.

In 1901, Rostand became the youngest writer to be elected to the Académie française. Chantecler produced in February 1910, was awaited with an interest, enhanced by considerable delay in the production, hardly equaled by the enthusiasm of its reception. Lucien Guitry was in the title role and Mme. Simone played the part of the pheasant, the play being a fantasy of bird and animal life, and the characters denizens of the farmyard and the woods.

Personal life

Rostand was married to poet Rosemonde Etienette Gerard who, in 1890, published Les Pipeaux: a volume of verse crowned by the Academy. The couple had two sons, Jean and Maurice.

In the 1900s, Rostand came to live in the Villa Arnaga in Cambo-les-Bains in the French Basque Country looking for a cure for his pleurisy. The house is now a heritage site and a museum of Rostand's life and Basque architecture and crafts. Rostand died in 1918, a victim of the Great Flu Epidemic, and is buried in the Cimetière de Marseille.

References

• Henry James in vol. 84, pp. 477 seq. The Cornhill Magazine.
• Marcel Migeo: Les Rostand, Paris, Stock, 1973. About Edmond, his wife Rosemonde, and their sons Jean and Maurice Rostand.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Edmond Rostand

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Edmond Rostand

• Brief biography of Rostand at Kirjasto (Pegasos)
• French text of Rostand's La princesse lointaine
• Works by Edmond Rostand at Project Gutenberg

v • d • e Académie Française Seat 31 Pierre de Boissat (1634) · Antoine Furetière (1662) · Jean de La Chapelle (1688) · Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet (1723) · Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1768) · Louis-Élisabeth de La Vergne de Tressan (1780) · Jean Sylvain Bailly (1783) · Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1803) · Gérard de Lally-Tollendal (1816) · Jean-Baptiste Sanson de Pongerville (1830) · Xavier Marmier (1870) · Henri de Bornier (1893) · Edmond Rostand (1901) · Joseph Bédier (1920) · Jérôme Tharaud (1938) · Jean Cocteau (1955) · Jacques Rueff (1964) · Jean Dutourd (1978)

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