Edmond Rostand

Not before too long his works were being compared to that of Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949).

Edmund Rostand was a prominent French playwright and poet. Rostand, who was born in Marseille on 1 April, 1868, the son of the distinguished economist Eugene Rostand (1843-1915), first achieved success in Paris at the age of twenty with his vaudeville sketch 'Le Gant Rouge".

A collection of poems in 1890 entitled "Les Musardises", would also be well received.

Some of Rostand's more successful plays were: "Les Romonesques" (1894), "La Princess Lomtain" (1895), "La Samaritaine" (1897), "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1897), "Aiglon" (1901) and "Chantecler" (1910). Many of Rostand's plays were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. The American rights to "Chantecler" alone would make him a small fortune. Edmund Rostand was a member of L'Académie française and a commander of the Légion d'honneur. He had dined with King Edward IV at Biarritz and read "Cyrano de Bergerac" to an audience of Paris laborers. At the outbreak of World War One his offer to enlist was politely turned down by French officials. After the sinking of the Lusitania, he wrote a long poem condemning the German ambassador to America.

Rostand passed away on 2 December, 1918 after a bout of influenza.

In his play "Cyrano de Bergerac", Rostand borrows the character of the Musketeer, D'Artagnan, the hero of Alexandre Dumas' novels "The Three Musketeers", "Twenty Years Later" and "The Viscount of Bragelonne". This has led to even more cross-referencing in film adaptations. In fact, all four Musketeers have at various times been played by a veteran Cyrano. José Ferrer made a career out of playing Cyrano, including in Cyrano et d'Artagnan (1964), in which D'Artagnan is played by Jean-Pierre Cassel. Cassel later played Cyrano in The Return of the Musketeers (1989), which was based on "Twenty Years Later". Ferrer would later play Athos in The Fifth Musketeer (1979), based on "The Viscount of Bragelonne". Gérard Depardieu, who also played Cyrano, went on to play the Musketeer Porthos in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), also based on The "Vicomte of Bragelonne". Richard Chamberlain, who played Aramis in The Three Musketeers (1973), The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) and The Return of the Musketeers (1989), played Cyrano on stage in 1973.

His play, "Cyrano De Bergerac," at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California was awarded the 1973 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Production.