Cyrano de Bergerac Versions of Reality Quotes Page 2
Citations follow this format: (Act.Line)
| Quote #4 (The melody of a Musette is heard. Montfleury appears upon the scene, a ponderous figure in the costume of a rustic shepherd, a hat garlanded with roses tilted over one ear, playing upon a beribboned pastoral pipe) |
The fact that Montfleury is acting in a play gives the whole scene a sense of artificiality. His lines are ridiculously fanciful and overblown; Cyrano hates him for this very reason, yet our hero’s own language isn’t exactly drastically different.
| Quote #5 THE BOY (To Cyrano) |
Though he doesn’t reveal it here, Cyrano hates Montfleury simply for looking at Roxane the wrong way. Also, Cyrano’s speech has a hint of pretentiousness in its Italian "primo" and "secundo," echoing the manner in which stage drama is written.
| Quote #6 ANOTHER COMEDIENNE (Jumps down, speaks to a Comedian costumed as an old man.) |
The stage actors and Cyrano both steep their speech in the language of a drama – calling each other by their Italian stage names (Cassandre, Isabelle, Léandre) and discussing Cyrano’s upcoming fight with de Guiche’s 100 men as an "Italian farce and Tragedy-of-Blood." In reality, of course, it is a much more serious and real fight to death. That these men speak of it so lightly gets at the central conflict of Cyrano de Bergerac – that of comedic and overblown tone, juxtaposed with a more dramatic, underlying tragedy.
