Anyone who has read Shakespeare’s Richard
III and then done some research quickly realises that the play and history
don’t have all that much in common. And that’s fine. Shakespeare was above all
a man of the theatre who knew what sold, and if the play itself is a bit clunky
and long, the character of Richard is always a favourite with audiences,
whether he’s medieval and silky like Olivier, gothic and spidery like Sher or
modern and slick like Ewen Leslie in MTC’s 2010 production.
Cyrnano de Bergerac is another historical
character best known for the play losely based on his life rather than for
himself. Ishbel Addeyman has made
an effort to change all that with her 2010 book, Cyrano: The life and legend of Cyrano de Bergerac. She insists that
the real Cyrano is even more fascinating than the character. Sadly, she never
quites proves it.
Not that Cyrano is without interest. He was
a skilled swordsman, and did indeed fight 100 men at once. So the story at the
time had it, even if there was no proof of it beyond nine hats lost by the attackers. Still, even if
it was one against nine, that’s still a good effort tough to equal. He was a
writer and satirist, inventing science fiction, parodying 17th
century French society with his tales of journeys to the Moon and to the Sun
and the people he finds there. He had enemies who in the end murdered him – all
by the age of thirty-six.
Addeyman goes further than the legend. His cousin Roxanne was older than he,
and it seems of no romantic interest. Indeed, Addyman thinks it likely that he
was gay, with intense friendships and fight with certain male friends as her
evidence. Certainly it seems he was never involved in a great heterosexual
romance so who knows. It certainly would have made him even more an outsider in
his society.
As did his atheism. At the time atheism was
as daring and dangerous as some people seem to think it is now. But she harms this finding by the sheer
weight she puts on it. Having establlished this fact, she cannot leave it
alone. Everything leads back to his atheism. In one chapter she starts talking
about a mystery wound he has. This only holds her interest for a few pages
before she’s back to his atheism. Too much of this book feels like filler and
much of this filler is this. She even
claims the Jesuits killed him. Not with any evidence or anything, but he was
atheist and Jesuits get up to stuff so you know, it stands to reason.
Which is a pity. There is some good stuff
on the role of duelling in France and Cyrano’s attitude towards it, and
violence as his life went on. His literary fights with his rivals are also
good. He had difficult relations with his family, and would change his name to
create a more aristocratic background than his suburban Parisian one. Towards the end, he did indeed find a
patron; one that abandoned him after the attack that wounded and eventually
killed Cyrano. And he was proud of his large nose. All his portraits show him
posing at an angle that emphasised it. I would have liked to read more about the
man and less about the one, admittedly interesting aspect of him, that of his
religious beliefs or lack thereof. But perhaps she has the same challenge that
Shakespeare’s biographers have – there just isn’t that much material. Le Bret
wrote a biography and there is his own writing and letters, but the rest is
supposition and inference. Addyman may rely too much on this for mine.
She also makes one odd, glaring error. One
of Cyrano’s pet hates was plagiarism, and so she thinks it is ironic that his
fame rests on a play based on plagiarism. Cyrano giving Christian his lines to
speak to Roxanne is not plagiarism, it’s playwrighting. She seems unsure of the
meaning of ‘irony’ and ‘plagiarism’. Mind you, as Brisbane friends know, she’s
not alone. However, she’s on stronger ground when she reveals that the play
itself was banned from the US for fifty years, on charges of plagiarism.
Rostand had read a play with the central device of the friend giving another
his lines to woo a woman. His play was better but the charge stuck. And yes,
Moliere did steal the“what the devil was he doing there?” scene lock stock and barrel
from Cyrano.
But in the end, this is a rather dull book,
which is a pity. The historical Cyrano and his writing do deserve to be better
known than they are. But in the meanwhile, we could all do a lot worse than be
commemorated in such a romantic, glorious, tragic play.
