"Mon panache." Cyrano de Bergerac and history.

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 17^th 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.