Cyrano de Bergerac A Play in Five Acts

Cyrano De Bergerac - A Play in Five Acts by Edmond Rostand. Translated from the French by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard. Hercule-Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French dramatist and duelist. In fictional works about his life he is featured with an overly large nose, which people would travel from miles around to see. Portraits suggest that he did have a big nose, though not nearly as large as described in works about him. Cyrano's work furnished models and ideas for subsequent writers. He was the son of Abel de Cyrano, lord of Mauvieres and Bergerac, and Esperance Bellanger. He received his first education from a country priest, and had for a fellow pupil his friend and future biographer Henri Lebret. He then proceeded to Paris, and the heart of the Latin Quarter, to the college de Dormans-Beauvais, where he had as master Jean Grangier, whom he afterwards ridiculed in his comedy Le Pedant joue (The Pedant Tricked) of 1654. At the age of nineteen, he entered a corps of the guards, serving in the campaigns of 1639 and 1640.