Cyrano de Bergerac

Today we received our very own copies of Edmund Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. My initial reaction was one of perplexity as the play didn't even seem remotely familiar. When I first began to read through the stage directions of Act I, I just felt bombarded by all these different details that couldn't possibly fit into my typical idea of a theater. Once I began to get into the meat of the play, though, I was completely interested and absorbed with the relatability of the plot line. I ended up reading through the entire play even though we really only needed to finish Act III by Monday. From the cover of the play, it is ostensible that the play is set in England in "the olden days", but more specifically the 1640s. I should have also realized that Cyrano was the character in the center with the abnormally large appendage. The language of the play was also surprisingly not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Of the entire play, my favorite would definitely lie somewhere in between Act III with the archetypical balcony scene and Act V when Cyrano is finally able to reveal that it has been him all along. It was also from Cyrano that the "nose monologue" originated when Cyrano went into this great harangue when Valvert weakly criticized his nose. The symbolism within this play is amazingly great as well as you usually aren't able to analyze plays in the same way as we would in our literature classes. The white plume was the most memorable image in my mind upon finishing the play.