Among the proverbs of Spanish folk-lore there is a saying that good wine
retains its flavor in spite of rude bottles and cracked cups. The
success of M. Rostand’s brilliant drama, _Cyrano de Bergerac_, in its
English dress proves once more the truth of this adage. The fun and
pathos, the wit and satire, of the original pierce through the halting,
feeble translation like light through a ragged curtain, dazzling the
spectators and setting their enthusiasm ablaze.
Those who love the theatre at its best, when it appeals to our finer
instincts and moves us to healthy laughter and tears, owe a debt of
gratitude to Richard Mansfield for his courage in giving us, as far as
the difference of language and rhythm would allow, this _chef d’œuvre_
unchanged, free from the mutilations of the adapter, with the author’s
wishes and the stage decorations followed into the smallest detail. In
this way we profit by the vast labor and study which Rostand and Coquelin
gave to the original production.
Rumors of the success attained by this play in Paris soon floated across
to us. The two or three French booksellers here could not import the
piece fast enough to meet the ever increasing demand of our reading
public. By the time spring came, there were few cultivated people who
had not read the new work and discussed its original language and daring
treatment.
On arriving in Paris, my first evening was passed at the Porte St.
Martin. After the piece was over, I dropped into Coquelin’s
dressing-room to shake this old acquaintance by the hand and give him
news of his many friends in America.
Coquelin in his dressing-room is one of the most delightful of mortals.
The effort of playing sets his blood in motion and his wit sparkling. He
seemed as fresh and gay that evening as though there were not five
killing acts behind him and the fatigue of a two-hundred-night run,
uninterrupted even by Sundays, added to his “record.”
After the operation of removing his historic nose had been performed and
the actor had resumed his own clothes and features, we got into his
carriage and were driven to his apartment in the Place de l’Etoile, a
cosy museum full of comfortable chairs and priceless bric-à-brac. The
conversation naturally turned during supper on the piece and this new
author who had sprung in a night from obscurity to a globe-embracing
fame. How, I asked, did you come across the play, and what decided you
to produce it?
Coquelin’s reply was so interesting that it will be better to repeat the
actor’s own words as he told his tale over the dismantled table in the
tranquil midnight hours.
“I had, like most Parisians, known Rostand for some time as the author of
a few graceful verses and a play (_Les Romanesques_) which passed almost
unnoticed at the Français.
“About four years ago Sarah Bernhardt asked me to her ‘hôtel’ to hear M.
Rostand read a play he had just completed for her. I accepted
reluctantly, as at that moment we were busy at the theatre. I also
doubted if there could be much in the new play to interest me. It was
_La Princesse Lointaine_. I shall remember that afternoon as long as I
live! From the first line my attention was riveted and my senses were
charmed. What struck me as even more remarkable than the piece was the
masterly power and finish with which the boyish author delivered his
lines. Where, I asked myself, had he learned that difficult art? The
great actress, always quick to respond to the voice of art, accepted the
play then and there.
“After the reading was over I walked home with M. Rostand, and had a long
talk with him about his work and ambitions. When we parted at his door,
I said: ‘In my opinion, you are destined to become the greatest dramatic
poet of the age; I bind myself here and now to take any play you write
(in which there is a part for me) without reading it, to cancel any
engagements I may have on hand, and produce your piece with the least
possible delay.’ An offer I don’t imagine many young poets have ever
received, and which I certainly never before made to any author.
“About six weeks later my new acquaintance dropped in one morning to read
me the sketch he had worked out for a drama, the title rôle of which he
thought would please me. I was delighted with the idea, and told him to
go ahead. A month later we met in the street. On asking him how the
play was progressing, to my astonishment he answered that he had
abandoned that idea and hit upon something entirely different. Chance
had thrown in his way an old volume of Cyrano de Bergerac’s poems, which
so delighted him that he had been reading up the life and death of that
unfortunate poet. From this reading had sprung the idea of making Cyrano
the central figure of a drama laid in the city of Richelieu, d’Artagnan,
and the _Précieuses Ridicules_, a seventeenth-century Paris of love and
duelling.
“At first this idea struck me as unfortunate. The elder Dumas had worked
that vein so well and so completely, I doubted if any literary gold
remained for another author. It seemed foolhardy to resuscitate the
_Three Guardsmen_ epoch—and I doubted if it were possible to carry out
his idea and play an intense and pathetic rôle disguised with a burlesque
nose.
“This contrasting of the grotesque and the sentimental was of course not
new. Victor Hugo had broken away from classic tradition when he made a
hunchback the hero of a drama. There remained, however, the risk of our
Parisian public not accepting the new situation seriously. It seemed to
me like bringing the sublime perilously near the ridiculous.
“Fortunately, Rostand did not share this opinion or my doubts. He was
full of enthusiasm for his piece and confident of its success. We sat
where we had met, under the trees of the Champs Elysées, for a couple of
hours, turning the subject about and looking at the question from every
point of view. Before we parted the poet had convinced me. The role, as
he conceived it, was certainly original, and therefore tempting, opening
vast possibilities before my dazzled eyes.
“I found out later that Rostand had gone straight home after that
conversation and worked for nearly twenty hours without leaving the
study, where his wife found him at daybreak, fast asleep with his head on
a pile of manuscript. He was at my rooms the next day before I was up,
sitting on the side of my bed, reading the result of his labor. As the
story unfolded itself I was more and more delighted. His idea of
resuscitating the quaint interior of the Hôtel de Bourgogne Theatre was
original, and the balcony scene, even in outline, enchanting. After the
reading Rostand dashed off as he had come, and for many weeks I saw no
more of him.
“_La Princesse Lointaine_ was, in the meantime, produced by Sarah, first
in London and then in Paris. In the English capital it was a failure;
with us it gained a _succès d’estime_, the fantastic grace and lightness
of the piece saving it from absolute shipwreck in the eyes of the
literary public.
“Between ourselves,” continued Coquelin, pushing aside his plate, a
twinkle in his small eyes, “is the reason of this lack of success very
difficult to discover? The Princess in the piece is supposed to be a
fairy enchantress in her sixteenth year. The play turns on her youth and
innocence. Now, honestly, is Sarah, even on the stage, any one’s ideal
of youth and innocence?” This was asked so naïvely that I burst into a
laugh, in which my host joined me. Unfortunately, this grandmamma, like
Ellen Terry, cannot be made to understand that there are rôles she should
leave alone, that with all the illusions the stage lends she can no
longer play girlish parts with success.
“The failure of his play produced the most disastrous effect on Rostand,
who had given up a year of his life to its composition and was profoundly
chagrined by its fall. He sank into a mild melancholy, refusing for more
than eighteen months to put pen to paper. On the rare occasions when we
met I urged him to pull himself together and rise above disappointment.
Little by little, his friends were able to awaken his dormant interest
and get him to work again on _Cyrano_. As he slowly regained confidence
and began taking pleasure once more in his work, the boyish author took
to dropping in on me at impossible morning hours to read some scene hot
from his ardent brain. When seated by my bedside, he declaimed his lines
until, lit at his flame, I would jump out of bed, and wrapping my
dressing-gown hastily around me, seize the manuscript out of his hands,
and, before I knew it, find my self addressing imaginary audiences, poker
in hand, in lieu of a sword, with any hat that came to hand doing duty
for the plumed headgear of our hero. Little by little, line upon line,
the masterpiece grew under his hands. My career as an actor has thrown
me in with many forms of literary industry and dogged application, but
the power of sustained effort and untiring, unflagging zeal possessed by
that fragile youth surpassed anything I had seen.
“As the work began taking form, Rostand hired a place in the country, so
that no visitors or invitations might tempt him away from his daily toil.
Rich, young, handsome, married to a woman all Paris was admiring, with
every door, social or Bohemian, wide open before his birth and talent, he
voluntarily shut himself up for over a year in a dismal suburb, allowing
no amusement to disturb his incessant toil. Mme. Rostand has since told
me that at one time she seriously feared for his reason if not for his
life, as he averaged ten hours a day steady work, and when the spell was
on him would pass night after night at his study table, rewriting,
cutting, modelling his play, never contented, always striving after a
more expressive adjective, a more harmonious or original rhyme, casting
aside a month’s finished work without a second thought when he judged
that another form expressed his idea more perfectly.
“That no success is cheaply bought I have long known; my profession above
all others is calculated to teach one that truth.
“If Rostand’s play is the best this century has produced, and our
greatest critics are unanimous in pronouncing it equal, if not superior,
to Victor Hugo’s masterpieces, the young author has not stolen his
laurels, but gained them leaf by leaf during endless midnight hours of
brain-wringing effort—a price that few in a generation would be willing
to give or capable of giving for fame. The labor had been in proportion
to the success; it always is! I doubt if there is one word in his ‘duel’
ballad that has not been changed again and again for a more fitting
expression, as one might assort the shades of a mosaic until a harmonious
whole is produced. I have there in my desk whole scenes that he
discarded because they were not essential to the action of the piece.
They will probably never be printed, yet are as brilliant and cost their
author as much labor as any that the public applauded to-night.
“As our rehearsals proceeded I saw another side of Rostand’s character;
the energy and endurance hidden in his almost effeminate frame astonished
us all. He almost lived at the theatre, drilling each actor, designing
each costume, ordering the setting of each scene. There was not a dress
that he did not copy from some old print, or a _passade_ that he did not
indicate to the humblest member of the troop. The marvellous diction
that I had noticed during the reading at Sarah’s served him now and gave
the key to the entire performance. I have never seen him peevish or
discouraged, but always courteous and cheerful through all those weary
weeks of repetition, when even the most enthusiastic feel their courage
oozing away under the awful grind of afternoon and evening rehearsal, the
latter beginning at midnight after the regular performance was over.
“The news was somehow spread among the theatre-loving public that
something out if the ordinary was in preparation. The papers took up the
tale and repeated it until the whole capital was keyed up to concert
pitch. The opening night was eagerly awaited by the critics, the
literary and the artistic worlds. When the curtain rose on the first act
there was the emotion of a great event floating in the air.” Here
Coquelin’s face assumed an intense expression I had rarely seen there
before. He was back on the stage, living over again the glorious hours
of that night’s triumph. His breath was coming quick and his eyes aglow
with the memory of that evening. “Never, never have I lived through such
an evening. Victor Hugo’s greatest triumph, the first night of
_Hernani_, was the only theatrical event that can compare to it. It,
however, was injured by the enmity of a clique who persistently hissed
the new play. There is but one phrase to express the enthusiasm at our
first performance—_une salle en délire_ gives some idea of what took
place. As the curtain fell on each succeeding act the entire audience
would rise to its feet, shouting and cheering for ten minutes at a time.
The coulisse and the dressing-rooms were packed by the critics and the
author’s friends, beside themselves with delight. I was trembling so I
could hardly get from one costume into another, and had to refuse my door
to every one. Amid all this confusion Rostand alone remained cool and
seemed unconscious of his victory. He continued quietly giving last
recommendations to the figurants, overseeing the setting of the scenes,
and thanking the actors as they came off the stage, with the same
self-possessed urbanity he had shown during the rehearsals. Finally,
when the play was over, and we had time to turn and look for him, our
author had disappeared, having quietly driven off with his wife to their
house in the country, from which he never moved for a week.”
It struck two o’clock as Coquelin ended. The sleepless city had at last
gone to rest. At our feet, as we stood by the open window, the great
square around the Arc de Triomphe lay silent and empty, its vast arch
rising dimly against the night sky.
As I turned to go, Coquelin took my hand and remarked, smiling: “Now you
have heard the story of a genius, an actor, and a masterpiece.”