Essay | Cyrano de Bergerac: The Man Who Could Not Love Himself

Cyrano DeBergerac, written in 1897 in Paris, France, is considered by many to be a heroic comedy, though some may see it as a tragedy. Cyrano has a sharp, witty mind, and is a skilled swordsman as well as a beautiful poet. What can go wrong for this remarkable man? His unseemly nose causes him to feel serious self-doubt and nonsensical shame. He is in love with his beautiful cousin, Roxanne, but she knows nothing of his endearments as he feels he is too ugly to be anything other than a "brotherly cousin" (II, 53). Cyrano uses grand gestures to shield himself from his own discomfort with himself, and the front that he puts up with these grand actions was quite successful in hiding his low self-esteem and low self-confidence.

In the first act, Valvert approaches Cyrano with the not so clever insult...
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