Cyrano

By Jack R. Stanley

Cyrano de Bergerac, a proud but poor member of the respected and elite Gascon Guard, is a gifted poet as well as a feared swordsman. The love of his life is a distant cousin, the beautiful Roxane. But Roxane is in love with a handsome new cadet in the Guard, Christian. Christian also loves Roxane but gallant as he is, he is a dullard and a dolt when it comes to the one thing Roxane values, a man who can speak and write the words of love.

Roxane asks Cyrano to protect Christian as he joins the Gascon Guard and haunted by the large and ugly nose, Cyrano knows he can never win Roxane himself and thus he vows to protect the one person she loves. In a famous balcony scene, Cyrano whispers the words to Christian who calls them up to an enraptured Roxane. When Christian climbs up to claim a kiss, Cyrano knows the kiss is really his but he can do nothing about it.

At the famous siege of Arras in 1640 against the Spanish, Christian proves his valor even to Cyrano who sometimes twice a day braves the Spanish lines to post love letters supposedly from Christian’s hand to Roxane back in Paris.

This is one of the most celebrated love stories of all times and a classic of the stage around the world. Written in poetry by Edmond Rostand, it is a story of wonderful scenes and fascinating characters. But many have not read it and will not because it is poetry. What Jack R. Stanley has done is to tell Rostand’s story in prose so other who might not otherwise attempt it, could enjoy this masterpiece of theatrical story telling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack R. Stanley
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301550883

Jack R. Stanley

Jack R. Stanley is an award winning novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. As an officer and combat photographer in Vietnam he earned the Bronze Star. Yet he says, “When you’re in a firefight and everybody else on both side have guns while you have a camera --- you get to change your pants a lot.” After his military service he received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in Radio-TV-Film. His doctoral dissertation was on the long running TV series GUNSMOKE. Stanley also received two of Michigan1s most prestigious creative writing awards, The Hopwood Award, one for a one-act play and the second for a novel. Still married to his gifted high school sweetheart, Stanley’s first academic position was TV Area Head at The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Radio-TV-Film. He later moved to deep-south Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley for a challenging position with The University of Texas-Pan American. Here he taught Theatre-TV-Film for 30 years in the Department of Communication serving as Department Chair at U.T.P.A. for 11 years. He did take one year out to work for The University of Alaska Anchorage as a visiting professor. Back in Texas, Stanley directed for stage at The University Theatre, produced and directed fifteen student staffed, cast, and crewed feature films, writing most of the original screenplays. Just a few of his credits are available on IMDB.com. He now lives in the Texas Panhandle where he writes his fiction and runs his blog, www.TheFictionWritersNotebook.com . His webpage is www.jackrstanley.com.

Book preview

CYRANO

A Mystery/Comedy in Two Acts

by

Jack R. Stanley

Based on

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

By

Edmond Rostand

© All Rights Reserved

CYRANO

Text copyright © 2013 by Jack R. Stanley

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

This play may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in his/her review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

Credits:

Cover illustration background

iStock illustration by gimbat

http://www.istockphoto.com/

[e-mail]

www.thefictionwritersnotebook.com

www.jackrstanley.com

ABOUT READING PLAYS

Plays are not meant to be read by the general public. A script is actually a technical document intended for the eyes of professionals working in the theatre only. The text is written for the actors, designers, and director who will combine their talents to mount a production of the script. The description of the sets, lights, props, actions and sounds are often written phrases and incomplete sentences, not punctuated correctly, and annotated in a code expected to be interpreted by those who know the code. Think of the difference between a script and a play as the difference between a blueprint and a building.

In a very real sense, ..the play’s the thing – not the script. The script alone does not have the magic of a staged production and was written only to imply some of the production possibilities. Clipped descriptions, abbreviations, and lack of detail are characteristic of a script. The words on the page are not always as dynamic, colorful, or even emotional as they might be were the story being told in a novel or short story.

The protocol of the theatre is that anything in parenthesis, stage directions, descriptions of characters, costumes, sets, and props, may all be altered as long as the actors stays true to the original dialogue. This explains modernizations and drastic re-stagings of famous plays that still ring true to the original.

All directions, R (right) and L (left) are Stage Right and Stage Left, or left and right from the actors perspective facing the audience, not from the audience point of view watching the performance. Thus when something is indicated to be R it is really to the left and L would be right as the reader might imagine seeing the play. C is Center Stage and obviously the same from either perspective.

In some earlier periods, the stage used to be raked or slanted with the lower portion being toward the audience and the upper portion being the back of the stage, away from the audience. So when something or someone is to be U they are to be Up Stage and D is Down Stage. The action and description in the script might indicate that some object or person is to be above or below something or someone else (C D or R U). Unless there’s an indication that the set is on multiple levels, above and below usually refer to Up Stage and Down Stage of the point of reference.

Most scripts are also written for a proscenium stage where the audience is all out in front of the stage as opposed to being in-the-round or thrust (part of the stage extending beyond the curtain line into the audience like a wide runway.

An X means cross or move from one position on the stage to another. Part of the set, French doors, for example, might be called F.W. for French Windows.

OFF implies that the dialogue, sound, character, or location is not on stage but is, instead, Off Stage and not to be seen. OFF R would be Off Stage to the Right. O.S. means off stage.

ASIDE is a line a character says mostly for the audience’s benefit but is often said as if the character is talking to himself and no one else on stage is supposed to be able to hear the line.

It is only through the understanding of the code and the collaboration of many artists that a script comes to life and becomes the play that touches and moves an audience.

Speaking character will have their names in BOLD and ALL CAPS. Dialogue is also in Bold and dialogue is in italics.

(NOTE: In this script minor editorial corrections or additions for the sake of clarity appear in BOLD and ITALICS.)

CYRANO

by

Jack R. Stanley

ACT I

SCENE 1

At Rise:

(Hotel Burgundy Paris. 1640.)

(The hall of the Hotel Burgundy, a sort of tennis-court arranged and decorated for a theatrical performance. The hall is oblong.)

(Benches are in front of the stage. The curtain is composed of two tapestries which can be drawn aside. Above a harlequin's mantle are the royal arms. There are broad steps from the stage to the hall.)

(Two rows of side galleries, one over the other, the highest divided into boxes. No seats in the pit of the hall, some benches forming steps, and underneath, a staircase which leads to the upper seats. An improvised buffet ornamented with little lamps, vases, glasses, plates of tarts, cakes, bottles, etc.)

(A large door, half open, lets in the spectators.)

(At the rising of the curtain the hall is in semi-darkness, and still empty. The lamps are lowered in the middle of the pit ready to be lighted.)

(The public, TROOPERS, BURGHERS, followed by the MARQUISES, Cuigy and BRISSAILLE, LADIES, LE BRET, the BUFFET-GIRL, the AUDIENCE, etc.)

(People have taken their seats and for the moment our attention is on the striking beautiful ROXANE ENTERS accompained by the MARQUISES DE GUISHE and VALVERT, handsomely dressed nobles in the latest fashion, in on of the boxes.)

(The curtains on the stage open and MONTFLEURY ENTERS, stout, costumed in an Arcadian shepherd's dress, a hat wreathed with roses drooping over one ear, blowing into a ribboned drone pipe.)

AUDIENCE

Bravo, Montfleury! Montfleury!

MONTFLEURY

(Bowing low, begins)

Thrice blessed is he who hides from pomp and power. In solitary prayer or abroad with the crowded market place where balmy zephyrs fan his noble cheeks Ö

A VOICE (O.S.)

And blow his carcass off the stage.

(General stupor. Every one turns round. Murmurs.)

MONTFLEURY

(Begins