The titular character of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac is a deeply complicated man, a hero with many insecurities and many desires he hides behind a facade of bravado. However, there are no soliloquies to help understand these motivations and personality. Instead, the audience learns this information through his interactions with several minor characters, with each showcasing a part of Cyrano’s personality that remains unseen when the bombastic polymath is on stage, challenging the rest of the world, helping Christian woo Roxanne, and showing off to his fellow cadets.
The most rominent of these minor characters are Le Bret, whose interaction with Cyrano helps the audience understand the sensitive and insecure side of Cyrano, and Ragueneau, who helps the audience understand the selfless and generous side of Cyrano. Without these two characters, the audience would only have a vague understanding of Cyrano’s mind, but with them analysis of the protagonist becomes far more fascinating, as the conversations of these tertiary characters provide clues to the audience to allow them to receive a more holistic portrait of Cyrano de Bergerac.
The overwhelming majority of the nformation present day historians know about the life of the real Cyrano de Bergerac comes from the memoirs of his close friend, Le Bret, and thus his presence in the play reflects their fraternal bond. In Cyrano, Le Bret serves as Cyrano’s confidant, the person who Cyrano confesses all of his doubts and desires to. These confessionals are characteristic of the dynamic Cyrano and Le Bret share throughout the play: when they are alone, Cyrano the Hero is gone, and replaced with Cyrano the Man,with all of his darkest insecurities and strongest desires on display for the audience to see and understand.
He confesses all to Le Bret, such as the ridiculous amount of money he spent to reimburse the theater after he ruins the play, that he loves Roxanne, and, most importantly, that he believes Roxanne could never love him back because he perceives himself as one of the ugliest human beings in the world. While the implication of this insecurity was always there, with this statement to Le Bret his motivations suddenly become crystal clear: he is overcompensating for his unsightly nose by attempting to be great in every other sense of the word: a great soldier, swordfighter, poet, philosopher, and romantic hero.
Every time he does something spectacular, it is to prove to people, specifically to Roxanne, that he is more than just a man with a long nose. Another aspect of their dynamic is how well Le Bret knows Cyrano and his role as the voice of reason: he is the only person in the entire play who can see through Cyrano’s attempts to hide his sadness and is the only one who truly cares about him enough to try and push him into the right direction.
He is the only one who criticizes Cyrano for wasting all of his money and refusing a partnership with Cardinal Richelieu, the ne who saw through Cyrano’s grand speech about loneliness and concludes that Roxanne said no, and the one who is concerned that his continual mockery of everyone in power will lead to bad things, as well as the only one who realizes how lonely Cyrano truly is.
Le Bret is the only one who expresses concern for Cyrano; throughout the play(starting in Act I and occurring sporadically throughout the rest up until Cyrano’s assassination in Act V) he warns Cyrano of all of the enemies he has made and all of the wrath he incurs on a regular basis from the nobility. Le Bret’s warnings are often ignored; when he ttempts to convince Cyrano of this in Act I he disregards the concern by proclaiming he is “overjoyed”. Nevertheless, it serves to foreshadow the causes of Cyrano’s eventual death, as his reputation eventually caught up with him and he was killed .
While his main role is to help the audience understand all of Cyrano that he represses, in these cases Le Bret serves as a plot device, hinting to the audience of Cyrano’s eventual ruin. To fulfill both of these functions with one character would not have been possible had it not been for the way Rostand makes the bond between the two characters believable. The audience grows to believe that the two soldiers are close friends, and he utilizes this to unveil the depths of Cyrano’s character. The other character that allows the audience to fully understand Cyrano is Ragueneau, the pastry cook and aspiring poet.
The way Cyrano interacts with the world differs in comparison to the way he interacts with those he truly cares about, and this contrast is especially apparent in his scenes with Ragueneau. The Cyrano in Act I is a brash individual willing to challenge an entire audience to duels to the death. If that was the only way Cyrano acted throughout the entire play, the audience wouldn’t be cheering his exploits, but instead think of him as a selfish daredevil with a self-esteem problem. However, with his interactions with Ragueneau, the audience sees how kind and loyal Cyrano can be to his friends.
Out of all of those in Ragueneau’s pastry shop, he is the only one who does not try to scam him: he even tries to convince the cook to not let the people around him (the soldiers, the poets, and his wife) to treat him in such a manner; he also is angered at Lise(Ragueneau wife) when he deduces that she has not been faithful to Ragueneau, warning her that he is “fond of Ragueneau; [he allows] noone.. to take his name in vain! “(Act II, page 59). With this action the audience can see that Cyrano is not self- centered; when he sees his friend about to be hurt, he takes action, regardless of the consequences.
This is also apparent when Ragueneau explains his suicide attempt to the Duenna. Ragueneau claims “I decided to put an end to it all, so I hanged myself. Just as my last breath was drawn, in comes Monsieur de Bergerac! He cuts me down, and gets me a job as his cousin’s steward. “(Rostand, Act III, Scene l). Rather than staying passive as his friend attempted suicide, Cyrano took the time to help Ragueneau build his life back together, showing the greatness Cyrano can achieve even when he does not have an audience at his side.
Their interactions also show his generosity: when Ragueneau complains to Cyrano that Moliere stole his scene word for word, all Cyrano asks is whether or not the audience liked it saying “It’s been my life’s role to prompt others to greatness and to be forgotten myself”(Rostand, Act V) He didn’t care whether or not he got the credit for it: all he wanted to now is if they liked it. As it is with Le Bret that the audience see Cyrano at his most insecure, it is with Ragueneau that the audience sees Cyrano at his most loyal, and without it, the audience would not know the noble character Cyrano.
Without these characters, the audience would only see Cyrano at his brashest, with briefly revealing moments that would leave them more confused and make Cyrano’s character seem less comprehensible. However, with the addition of the interaction between these two characters a complex man is constructed: someone who attempts to be the best at everything because he hinks he has the worst appearance, someone who is threatening to his enemies but overwhelmingly kind to his friends, someone who goes through several struggles(such as economic hardship and heartbreak) but is too prideful to let the world know of them.
While the common hero would be confidant in their abilities as well as skilled in nearly every regard, in this instance the hero is a flawed man: someone who is admirable in many regards, but is also deeply conflicted and without these characters, this sentiment would never have been expressed to its full potential.
