ROSTAND, EDMOND (1869- )

This article appears in Volume V23, Page 754 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: RON-SAC

ROSTAND, EDMOND (1869- ) , French dramatist, was born on the 1st of April 1869, the son of Joseph

Eugene

EUGENE

Herbert Rostand (b. 1843), a prominent journalist and economist of Marseilles. His first play, a

burlesque

BURLESQUE (Ital. burlesco, from burla, a joke, fun, playful
trick
- TRICK
)

, Les romanesques, was produced on the 21st of May 1894 at the Theatre Francais. He took the motive of his second piece, La Princesse lointaine (Theatre de la Renaissance, 5th April 1895), from the story of the troubadour Rudel and the Lady of

Tripoli

. The part of Melissande was created by Sarah Bernhardt, who also was the

original

ORIGINAL

Photine of La Samaritaine (Theatre de la Renaissance, 14th April 1897), a Biblical drama in three scenes taken from the gospel story of the woman of Samaria. The production of his " heroic comedy " of Cyrano de Bergerac (28th December 1897, Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin), with Coquelin in the title-role, was a

triumph

TRIUMPH (triumphus)

. No such enthusiasm for a drama in verse had been known since the days of Hugo's Hernani. The play was quickly translated into English, German, Russian and other European languages. For his hero he had

drawn

DRAWN

on French 17th-century history; in L'Aiglon he chose a subject from Napoleonic legend, suggested probably by Henri Welschinger's Roi de Rome, 1811-32 (1897), which contained much new information about the unhappy life of the duke of Reichstadt, son of

Napoleon

NAPOLEON

I. and Marie Louise, under the surveillance of Metternich at the palace of Schonbrunn. L'Aiglon, in six acts and in verse, was produced (15th March 1900) by Sarah Bernhardt at her own theatre, she herself undertaking the part of the duke of Reichstadt. In 1902 Rostand was elected to the French Academy. His Chantecler, produced in February 1910, was awaited with an

interest

INTEREST

(enhanced by considerable delay in the production) hardly equalled by the enthusiasm of its reception. Lucien Guitry was in the title-role and Mme. Simone played the part of the

pheasant

PHEASANT

, the play being a fantasy of bird and animal life, and the characters denizens of the farmyard and the woods. Rostand's wife, nee Rosemonde ltienette Gerard, published in 1890 Les Pipeaux, a volume of verse crowned by the Academy.
See a notice by Henry James in vol. 84, pp. 477 seq. of the Corn-hill Magazine.

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