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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Edmond Rostand's 'L'Aiglon' is a remarkable poetic drama that explores the life of Napoleon Bonaparte's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, known as l'Aiglon (the Eaglet). Set against the backdrop of post-Napoleonic Europe, the play intertwines themes of ambition, identity, and the burden of legacy with Rostand's characteristic lyrical style. Written in 1900, it features ornate dialogue and rich imagery, reflecting the Symbolist movement's emphasis on deep emotional resonance and the exploration of the subconscious. Rostand vividly captures the Eaglet's inner turmoil as he grapples with his heritage while facing the harsh realities of exile and royal expectations. Edmond Rostand, a prominent French playwright and poet, is known for his innovative contributions to theater, notably his earlier work 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' which established him as a master of romantic drama. A fervent admirer of Napoleonic legend and a descendant of a distinguished lineage, Rostand drew inspiration from the Eaglet's poignant tale to explore the struggles of individuals caught between personal desire and societal obligations, illustrating the complex interplay of history and destiny. 'L'Aiglon' is an essential read for anyone interested in French literature, history, or the intricacies of character-driven drama. Rostand's exploration of identity and legacy resonates profoundly with contemporary audiences, making this play not only a timeless classic but also a captivating reflection on the human spirit's resilience in the face of greater forces. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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L'Aiglon
Table of Contents
Introduction
A young prince, heir to a thunderous name, wrestles with the glittering cage of legend that both crowns and imprisons him.
Edmond Rostand’s L’Aiglon unfolds the drama of Napoleon II, the Duke of Reichstadt, a youth living under the weight of an imperial legacy that is at once a promise and a sentence. Set within the ceremonious order of the Austrian court, the play observes a life shaped by others’ expectations and by the restless echo of the Napoleonic myth. Rather than a chronicle of battles, it is a study of dreams, identity, and the fraught inheritance of glory. The stage becomes a mirror where ambition meets restraint, and where history’s shadow darkens a child of destiny.
A major figure of the Belle Époque, Rostand wrote L’Aiglon at the turn of the twentieth century, after the runaway success of Cyrano de Bergerac. Premiering in 1900, the play demonstrates his commitment to the poetic theater, fusing lyrical intensity with psychological nuance. Across six acts, he crafts a portrait of a young man caught between personal yearning and political circumstance. Rostand’s purpose is not to re-litigate history but to test the human heart under the pressure of a monumental name. Without revealing outcomes, the work charts the turbulence of becoming oneself when that self is already proclaimed by the world.
The Paris premiere at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt is itself a landmark of stage history, for Sarah Bernhardt created the title role in a celebrated instance of a woman playing a young man. Her performance, at once ethereal and resolute, helped define the public image of the Eaglet and confirmed the play’s stature as a star vehicle and a serious poetic drama. Rostand’s verse provided the actor with a rich palette of cadence and emotion, and audiences encountered a theatrical experience that was both modern in psychology and grand in musicality. From the outset, L’Aiglon projected an aura of event and artistry.
L’Aiglon endures as a classic because it preserves and renews the Romantic tradition of verse drama at a moment when naturalism dominated the stage. Rostand offers a countercurrent: an ardent, musical language framing intimate conflicts of conscience and destiny. The play catalyzed conversations about the viability of poetic theater in an age of realism, demonstrating that heightened speech could serve subtle character work. Its influence resides in proving the stage-worthiness of historical subjects approached as inner quests. As a companion to Cyrano in literary history, it broadened the map of the modern poetic play, securing Rostand’s place among canonical dramatists.
At the core of L’Aiglon lies the theme of inheritance—what it means to bear a name that commands armies long after the drums are silent. The Duke’s inward struggle touches questions of national memory, filial duty, and the longing to act when action is circumscribed by diplomacy. Rostand explores the seductive power of legend and the more fragile, yet honest, power of self-knowledge. The tension between spectacle and sincerity, between the theater of politics and the privacy of a young man’s hopes, gives the play its pulse. It invites readers to weigh the real against the resplendent but unreachable past.
Rostand’s craft shows in the play’s architecture and style. He builds scenes that move from quiet introspection to ceremonial display, letting the poetry carry feeling without drowning sense. The verse, flexible and luminous, creates a world where symbolic images—eagles, mirrors, uniforms—gain dramatic force without reducing characters to emblems. Dialogues become arenas of persuasion and self-revelation, rather than mere declamation. Such writing demands precise staging and attentive reading, rewarding those who listen to cadence as much as to argument. L’Aiglon’s aesthetic—elevated yet alert to human frailty—exemplifies Rostand’s conviction that beauty and clarity can coexist on the modern stage.
While the play revolves around the Duke of Reichstadt, its gallery of figures—courtiers, guardians, and political tacticians—frames his development with delicate contrasts. Some safeguard him, some flatter him, and some measure him against history’s harsh scales. The Austrian court is rendered as both protective habitat and elegant confinement, a setting where etiquette carries the force of law. Rostand’s characterization favors revealing gestures, small turns of phrase, and shifting allegiances over simplistic moral labels. The protagonist’s education—emotional, political, and theatrical—unfolds as he learns to read the intentions around him. The result is a drama of becoming, attended by an audience of watchful masks.
Written at a moment when France was reassessing its identity and past, L’Aiglon interrogates how nations remember and ritualize power. The figure of Napoleon II offers a lens on mythmaking: the son stands at a crossroads where the legend of the father collides with foreign diplomacy and familial compromise. Without turning polemical, Rostand dramatizes the ways public narratives claim private lives. Vienna, with its codes and ceremonies, becomes the stage where Europe rehearses the aftermath of empire. In this context, the play’s lyricism is not an escape but a means of sensing the emotional costs of political arrangement.
The play’s initial triumph consolidated Rostand’s reputation and helped keep poetic drama central to French theatrical life into the new century. Its famous premiere and subsequent revivals affirmed the viability of verse on a stage increasingly fascinated by contemporary realism. The work has remained a touchstone for actors seeking roles that demand technical finesse and moral imagination, and for directors interested in balancing pageantry with intimacy. While fashions shift, L’Aiglon retains critical esteem as a meticulously composed exploration of inherited destiny, an exemplar of star-centered production, and a reminder that history can be dramatized without surrendering the complexity of individual feeling.
For contemporary readers and spectators, L’Aiglon resonates with issues that continue to press on private and public life: the burden of expectations, the negotiation between personal voice and collective story, the challenge of claiming agency within institutions. In an age dense with narratives—familial, national, digital—the play’s meditation on living under a name remains acute. Rostand invites audiences to consider how imagination can liberate and mislead, how ambition can clarify and cloud. The poetry, far from antique ornament, operates as a language for experiences that prose often dulls: doubt, courage, and the magnetic pull of ideals that may not be achievable.
To encounter L’Aiglon is to enter a theater where history breathes through verse and where youth faces the double edge of glory and confinement. Its lasting appeal lies in the balance it strikes between spectacle and soul, public myth and private truth. Rostand offers a work at once stately and intimate, rich in stagecraft and humane in insight. As a classic, it preserves a lineage of poetic drama while speaking directly to modern dilemmas of identity and responsibility. Readers come away attuned to the costs and consolations of legacy, and to the fragile courage it takes to define oneself within its shadow.
Synopsis
L’Aiglon is a verse drama by Edmond Rostand that follows the short, constrained life of Napoleon II, the Duke of Reichstadt, in the Austrian court after his father’s fall. Set primarily at Schönbrunn Palace, the play traces the young prince’s struggle between personal desire and political expectation. Across six acts, it presents a portrait of a sheltered heir whose identity is defined by a legendary name he never chose. Rostand’s scenes unfold as court rituals, private confessions, and guarded encounters, showing a young man watched by statesmen and tutors, praised and contained in equal measure, and yearning for a France he has never truly known.
The play opens in Vienna with the Duke under strict supervision, living among uniforms, ceremonies, and carefully chosen books. Diplomats, servants, and tutors measure his words for signs of ambition. He is delicate in health yet proud in bearing, keenly aware of being the son of the Eagle, and chafes at the lesser title of Reichstadt. Rumors of French loyalty swirl beyond palace walls. The atmosphere is instructive and polite, but tense. From the outset, the prince reveals a taste for history and strategy, coupled with a restless imagination that makes his caretakers wary and his admirers quietly hopeful.
Efforts to steer the Duke toward Austrian loyalties intensify. His mother, Marie-Louise, urges prudence and peace, seeking to balance affection with the requirements of her adopted court. Strict etiquette limits his movement, yet reminders of his heritage keep arriving: anecdotes, medals, and maps that feed a growing inner resolve. A sympathetic officer, Prokesch, becomes a measured confidant, helping the prince study and dream without rash exposure. The court’s smooth politeness masks firm control, while the young man’s frailty, marked by a persistent cough, foreshadows the precariousness of his aspirations and the urgency that begins to color his every decision.
Whispers of conspiracy appear. Veterans and secret envoys reach out, evoking the Grande Armée and stories of past victories. An old soldier, Flambeau, emerges as a loyal witness to the father’s glory and a catalyst for the son’s ambition. The prince listens to tales of comradeship, discipline, and daring, and a tentative plan takes shape: a return to France that might rally hearts and restore a sense of purpose. Austrian surveillance, however, is meticulous. Metternich’s network reads intentions in gestures and late-night meetings. Temptations of a secure Austrian commission counter the call of adventure, forcing the Duke to weigh caution against calling.
Amid court entertainments and formal reviews, the Duke reveals flashes of allegiance that hint at an identity beyond Austrian titles. Polite dances, compliments, and uniforms cannot disguise that he is being measured as both symbol and risk. Marie-Louise pleads for safety, while friends quietly coordinate messages, routes, and signals. His health falters, sharpening the tension between time and intent. Every public smile seems calculated; every private word is weighed for consequences. The careful choreography of court life contrasts with the Prince’s internal march toward a decision, and the possibility of departure hangs in the air, suspenseful, unconfirmed, and increasingly fraught.
Rostand stages a visionary meditation on battlefield memory, with the past invoked through relics and imagination. The Duke studies campaigns and maps as if reenlisting in a history he has only heard described. The name of Wagram becomes a touchstone, conjuring drums, standards, and formations that stir both pride and longing. Flambeau’s recollections animate the silence, while the young man’s resolve seems to harden into purpose. Yet the contrast between legend and reality remains stark. Advisors remind him of his frail condition and the risks of political misstep. As the tension mounts, Austrian authorities prepare subtle measures to block any irrevocable move.
Events converge into diplomatic confrontation and personal declaration. Metternich presses the case for stability, warning against romance disguised as duty. Letters are scrutinized, meetings curtailed, and allies shadowed. The Duke pushes back, articulating a sense of self that cannot comfortably fit within the neat borders of his host empire. Maternal appeals intersect with strategic calculations, and the young prince faces a moment where words must become action or retreat. The play steers toward a decisive sequence whose precise outcomes remain guarded within its suspense, framing the clash between an inherited mission and the barriers raised by health, surveillance, and statecraft.
Throughout, the drama emphasizes how symbols guide and confine: the Eagle as legacy, the cloak as memory, the map as promise and trap. Dialogue balances courtly wit with lyrical exaltation, setting private yearning against diplomatic tact. Metternich embodies institutional patience and control; Flambeau personifies loyal memory and popular fervor; Prokesch offers tempered support; Marie-Louise represents domestic caution and compromise. Vienna’s salons and corridors become contested ground where glances carry policy, and silence carries threat. The verse heightens contrasts between the heroism of recollection and the reality of frailty, keeping the momentum pointed toward a resolution steeped in consequence rather than spectacle.
L’Aiglon’s central message concerns the weight of a name and the gap between legend and lived possibility. It portrays a youth shaped by others’ hopes, struggling to claim agency within a web of expectations, illness, and international scrutiny. Without relying on battle scenes or overt triumph, the play conveys how identity can be both banner and chain. Its final impression affirms the dignity of aspiration while acknowledging the limits imposed by power and circumstance. By tracking the prince’s restrained path from reverie to resolve, Rostand offers a clear, moving account of the Eaglet’s dilemma and the resonance of a legacy he cannot escape.
Historical Context
Edmond Rostand’s L’Aiglon is set principally in Vienna, at Schönbrunn Palace and its environs, during the late 1820s and early 1830s. This is the period following the Napoleonic Wars when the Habsburg Empire, guided by Prince Klemens von Metternich, dominated the conservative order of Europe. The protagonist is Napoleon II, titled Duke of Reichstadt, living under Austrian custody amid rigid court protocol. The play’s atmosphere emerges from the contrast between imperial splendor and political surveillance. Scenes evoke the plains near Vienna, especially the battlefield of Wagram, where memory of Napoleon I’s 1809 victory haunts an empire determined to neutralize his son’s identity.
The time is the Vormärz, a pre-1848 era marked by preventive repression, censorship, and a diplomatic Concert of Europe built to avert revolution. The place is a court that prizes dynastic equilibrium over popular sovereignty and personal destiny. In Vienna, French émigrés, diplomats, and Austrian officials mingle under the gaze of an efficient police. Napoleon II’s movements, education, and even name (“Franz” in Austria) are instruments of policy. Rostand situates the drama at the intersection of private longing and statecraft, in a city where treaties are negotiated in salons, and where the memory of Napoleonic battles remains uncomfortably close.
Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte was born on 20 March 1811 in the Tuileries Palace, Paris, to Napoleon I and Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. Styled “King of Rome” at birth, he symbolized the apex of Napoleonic dynastic ambition. Baptized in June 1811 in Notre-Dame, he embodied hopes for a hereditary imperial succession. In L’Aiglon, this origin—announced by titles, ceremonies, and heraldic eagles—becomes a measure of later confinement. The book connects the glittering circumstances of his birth to the melancholy of his exile, charting how political settlements transformed a promised sovereign into a carefully managed Habsburg ward.
Napoleon’s first abdication (11 April 1814, Treaty of Fontainebleau) and the Bourbon Restoration set the stage for the Congress of Vienna (September 1814–June 1815), which reorganized Europe. After the Hundred Days and Waterloo (18 June 1815), Napoleon abdicated again (22 June 1815) “in favor” of Napoleon II, though the powers recognized Louis XVIII. The Second Treaty of Paris (20 November 1815) imposed indemnities and occupation, entrenching monarchic legitimacy. L’Aiglon is grounded in these outcomes: the protagonist’s claim exists only in law’s shadow and legend’s glow. Rostand dramatizes a young man whose legal inheritance is nullified by diplomatic consensus and bayonets.
Metternich’s system, designed to preserve the Vienna settlement, relied on censorship, informers, and coordinated repression. The Carlsbad Decrees (1819) curtailed German universities and press; Austria’s police, under figures like Count Joseph von Sedlnitzky, surveilled dissidents and exiles. In the Habsburg capital, salon politics and bureaucratic controls domesticated potentially subversive memories, above all the Napoleonic. Napoleon II’s letters, visitors, tutors, and reading lists were monitored; his French entourage was pruned; even his public appearances were calibrated. Rostand’s work mirrors this apparatus: every movement of the Eaglet is watched, every gesture politicized, rendering personal longing inseparable from the machinery of European order.
The Habsburgs neutralized the Bonaparte heir by granting him the title Duke of Reichstadt (1818) and anchoring him at Schönbrunn under Count Moritz von Dietrichstein’s tutelage. He received a classical education and military drill but no political agency. By 1830 he was named a lieutenant colonel in the Austrian army, a distinction carefully devoid of command. Vienna itself bore Napoleonic scars: the 1809 Battle of Wagram, fought just east of the city, had led to the Treaty of Schönbrunn (14 October 1809) and, indirectly, to Napoleon’s marriage with Marie Louise (1810). Rostand’s Wagram scene reanimates these landscapes, staging memory as resistance to Habsburg erasure.
Marie Louise, awarded Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla for life by the Congress of Vienna (1815), governed from 1816 and formed a liaison with Count (later Prince) Adam Albert von Neipperg, marrying him morganatically in 1821. Her court in Parma produced children from that union, while her son remained in Vienna under Habsburg control. Parma’s politics exposed her dependence on Austrian troops, especially during unrest. The play reflects this maternal and political distance: L’Aiglon frames the mother’s absence as a byproduct of treaties that converted marriage into statecraft. The protagonist’s sense of abandonment mirrors the transactional logic of post-Napoleonic diplomacy.
During the Bourbon Restoration (1815–1830), clandestine Bonapartist circles in France, often overlapping with republican networks, maintained slogans, songs, and plots invoking “Napoléon II.” Police files recorded attempts at insurrection in the early 1820s, alongside the circulation of memoirs and proclamations romanticizing the Empire. The execution of the Four Sergeants of La Rochelle (1822) marked repression of a broader conspiratorial milieu. While many actions were republican rather than Bonapartist, the Napoleonic legend permeated them. Rostand channels this subculture through emissaries and veterans who, in the play, court the Eaglet’s imagination, offering a conspiratorial path that Austrian statecraft forbids and French politics complicate.
The Restoration monarchy itself oscillated between liberal concessions and ultra-royalist reaction. Louis XVIII’s Charter (1814) inaugurated constitutional monarchy; under Charles X (1824–1830), measures such as the indemnity to émigrés (1825) and the Law of Sacrilege (1825) polarized opinion. The Villèle ministry (1821–1827) tightened control; Martignac’s moderate interlude (1828) faltered; Polignac’s appointment (1829) triggered a constitutional crisis. This ferment nurtured both liberal and Bonapartist hopes. In L’Aiglon, France’s instability wafts into Vienna as rumor and newspaper headline, tempting the Duke with the prospect that regime change might reopen his claim—yet it also underscores how remote agency is when sovereignty rests on foreign cabinets.
The July Revolution (27–29 July 1830), sparked by Charles X’s July Ordinances, toppled the Bourbon king and brought Louis-Philippe of Orleans to the throne (9 August 1830). The “Three Glorious Days” reactivated tricolors in Paris and sharpened ideological divides across Europe. For Bonapartists, the upheaval suggested an opening for Napoleon II; for Metternich, it signaled danger. Austria tightened surveillance, denying the Duke permission to leave and redoubling diplomatic efforts to keep France monarchical but non-Bonapartist. Rostand links this convulsion to the Eaglet’s surging hopes: Paris seems within reach, but the Orléanist settlement and Austrian veto confine him to ceremonial rank and dreams.
The Polish November Uprising (1830–1831), launched in Warsaw on 29 November 1830 against Russian domination of the Congress Kingdom, resonated across the Concert system. Battles at Grochów (25 February 1831) and Ostrołęka (26 May) preceded Warsaw’s fall in September, propelling a “Great Emigration” to France. Austria maintained wary neutrality, policing borders and sympathies. The uprising embodied romantic nationalism and martyrdom—motifs central to Rostand’s staging. L’Aiglon’s yearnings align with the Polish cause’s language of national right versus imperial order; yet, as with Poland’s defeat, his aspirations succumb to the same conservatives who equate stability with the suppression of charismatic, popular sovereignties.
In 1831, revolts erupted in Modena and the Papal Legations. Duke Francis IV of Modena enticed conspirator Ciro Menotti, then arrested him; Austrian forces under General Johann Maria Philipp Frimont intervened, reoccupying Bologna in March. Parma, ruled by Marie Louise, faced unrest; she fled temporarily, returning under Austrian protection. These events displayed Italy’s patchwork of dynasties and Austria’s role as enforcer of the Vienna system. L’Aiglon mirrors this Italian turbulence as family history: the mother’s duchy survives by Habsburg bayonets, just as the son’s identity is curbed by Habsburg policy. The revolts’ suppression foreshadows the play’s verdict on thwarted national longing.
The Duke of Reichstadt pursued an Austrian military career in form, if not in substance. Commissioned in adolescence, he excelled in drill, languages, and staff studies, and by 1830 he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. Illness and politics withheld any field command. Count Anton von Prokesch-Osten, an Austrian diplomat and soldier, befriended him in 1831, encouraging historical reflection and discreet ambition. These facts undergird Rostand’s portrayal of a prince shaped into an officer who is never permitted to fight. The uniform becomes emblem and prison: L’Aiglon’s sword flashes in rehearsal and rhetoric, while the state reduces war to a memory lesson.
Tuberculosis, likely contracted in late 1831, progressed rapidly; Napoleon II died at Schönbrunn on 22 July 1832, aged twenty-one. He was interred in the Habsburg imperial crypt (Kapuzinergruft), his heart placed separately in the Herzgruft, following dynastic custom. In 1940, his remains—except heart and viscera—were transferred to Les Invalides in Paris, underscoring his enduring symbolic value. Rostand anticipates the pathos of an heir consumed by legend and disease: the Austrian state wins by outlasting the body it confines. The play’s Vienna becomes both sanatorium and mausoleum, where dynastic protocols administer the final rites to a French imperial possibility.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Napoleonic legend intensified. Emmanuel de Las Cases’s Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (1823) fashioned a moralized Napoleon; under Louis-Philippe, the “retour des cendres” (15 December 1840) enshrined him at Les Invalides. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s rise and the Second Empire (1852–1870) revived imperial pageantry, while the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine sharpened French nostalgia for martial grandeur. Rostand, writing in the Third Republic and premiering L’Aiglon in 1900, drew on this reservoir of memory. The book reflects and interrogates a national cult: it stages the heir as the ultimate relic, exposing both the seduction and the sterility of imperial remembrance.
As social and political critique, the book dissects the Metternich order’s moral economy: stability secured through surveillance, censorship, and dynastic manipulation. By dramatizing a prince who is simultaneously honored and neutralized, it exposes how the Vienna settlement converted persons into pawns. The Austrian court’s ceremonials, tutors, and uniforms mask the deprivation of agency. L’Aiglon highlights the costs of a system that suppresses national aspirations—Polish, Italian, French—while fortifying aristocratic privilege. The play indicts a Europe that fears plebeian enthusiasm and avoids legal clarity, preferring arrangements that preserve thrones. Its critique targets the unspoken violence of “peace” administered by bureaucratic, hereditary elites.
The work also reflects on contemporary France. Premiering amid the aftershocks of the Dreyfus Affair and enduring revanchism after 1871, it questions the uses of glory and the temptations of militarist nostalgia. By contrasting veterans like Flambeau with courtiers and policemen, it lays bare class disparities between those who bled for flags and those who manage symbols. The Eaglet’s tragedy warns against confusing myth with policy: imperial memory cannot substitute for institutions that protect rights. In presenting an heir undone by legend and realpolitik, the book critiques both autocratic surveillance abroad and the domestic French appetite for charismatic shortcuts to national redemption.
Author Biography
Edmond Rostand was a French poet and dramatist of the Belle Époque, celebrated for revitalizing verse drama at a time when naturalism dominated the stage. Best known for Cyrano de Bergerac, he combined lyrical language, theatrical bravura, and a romantic sensibility that harked back to earlier nineteenth-century models while speaking to contemporary audiences. His plays foreground ideals such as honor, courage, imagination, and generosity, often embodied in charismatic figures whose eloquence is as important as their actions. A public literary figure with immense popular success, Rostand became a touchstone for neo-romantic theater and remains identified with the very idea of dramatic “panache.”
Born in the late 1860s in Marseille, Rostand was educated in Paris, where he pursued law studies while gravitating toward literature. He published early poetry, notably the collection Les Musardises, and joined the lively Parisian literary scene of the 1890s. Although he lived amid Symbolist and Parnassian currents, he most openly aligned himself with the broader Romantic tradition, particularly the legacy of Victor Hugo’s theatrical rhetoric. The discipline of classical French verse—and its alexandrine line—left a lasting mark on his technique. Mentors and models were public rather than private: he learned from the stage itself, from actors, and from audience response.
Rostand’s first major theatrical success arrived with Les Romanesques in the mid-1890s, a witty, metatheatrical comedy that delighted Paris audiences and later inspired adaptations far beyond France. He followed with more lyrically ambitious works, including La Princesse Lointaine and La Samaritaine, which showcased his interest in legend, faith, and idealized love. A crucial boost came from leading performers who championed his writing, above all Sarah Bernhardt, whose star power helped introduce his plays to wide public attention. These early triumphs established Rostand as a distinctive voice: a dramatist of exuberant poetry, carefully crafted scenes, and a generous theatrical imagination.
Cyrano de Bergerac, premiered in the late 1890s, made Rostand internationally famous. The role created for Constant Coquelin became a defining part in French theater, and the play’s blend of bravado, humor, and pathos resonated immediately with audiences. Written in rhymed alexandrines yet paced with modern energy, Cyrano reasserted the viability of verse tragedy-comedy on a grand scale. Its celebrated speeches, resourceful stagecraft, and memorable imagery fueled translations, revivals, and adaptations throughout the twentieth century. Critics praised its craftsmanship and sheer theatricality, while readers embraced its generous spirit. The play swiftly eclipsed his earlier efforts and anchored his reputation.
Rostand consolidated his fame with L’Aiglon in the early 1900s, a verse drama about the Duke of Reichstadt that again drew star performers, including Sarah Bernhardt in the title role. The play balanced historical pageant with elegiac introspection and met with major public success. Around this period he was elected to the Acade9mie frane7aise, cementing his status within France’s cultural establishment. He continued to pursue ambitious projects, notably Chantecler in the 1910s, an allegorical play—set in a barnyard and spoken in verse—that divided critics but attracted intense curiosity. Rostand preferred extensive revisions and long rehearsals, trusting stage realization to refine his poetic designs.
Thematically, Rostand’s oeuvre celebrates idealism under pressure. He returned to motifs of honor, self-sacrifice, and imagination’s power, countering the determinism of naturalist drama with characters who speak themselves into nobility. His dramaturgy married classical technique to theatrical spectacle: duels of wit and steel, grand monologues, and choreographed ensembles. He wrote primarily in verse, relishing linguistic music and rhetorical flourish, yet aimed always at clarity and momentum. Though not a programmatic polemicist, he implicitly advocated for the stage as a space of aspiration and moral uplift. Period retreats to the French southwest helped him work intensively, away from Parisian distractions, as he fine-tuned language and rhythm.
In his later years, Rostand remained a prominent figure even as new theatrical movements challenged the romantic mode he embodied. He lived into the late 1910s, a period marked by war and pandemic, and his death came amid that unsettled era. His legacy has endured robustly. Cyrano de Bergerac is among the most performed French plays worldwide, regularly revived and retranslated, while Les Romanesques seeded adaptations, most famously the American musical The Fantasticks. Today, readers and audiences encounter Rostand as a master of eloquent, generous theater—an artist whose faith in language, courage, and playfulness continues to animate stages and popular imagination.
L'Aiglon
TRANSLATED BY
LOUIS N. PARKER
The First ActThe Second ActThe Third ActThe Fourth ActThe Fifth ActThe Sixth Act
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY The cast as presented by Maude Adams at the Knickerbocker Theatre, New York, October, 1900
The Duke of Reichstadt
,
son of Napoleon I. and the Archduchess Maria Louisa of Austria
Maude Adams
Flambeau
,
a veteran
J. H. Gilmour
Prince Metternich
,
Chancellor of Austria
Edwin Arden
Count Prokesch
Percy Lyndall
Baron Friedrich von Gentz
Eugene Jepson
The Attaché of the French Embassy
at the Austrian Court
Oswald York
The Tailor
,
a conspirator
William Lewers
Count Maurice Dietrichstein
Edward Lester
Baron von Obenaus
R. Peyton Carter
The Emperor Francis of Austria
Jos. Francœur
Marshal Marmont
,
Duke of Ragusa
J. H. Benrimo
Count Sedlinzky
,
Prefect of the Austrian Police
William Crosby
The Marquis of Bombelles
,
betrothed to Maria Louisa
Clayton Legge
Tiburtius de Loget
William Irving
Lord Cowley
,
English Ambassador at the Austrian Court
Rienzi de Cordova
Count Sandor
Edward Jacobs
Doctor Malfatti
H. D. James
General Hartmann
Herbert Carr
Captain Foresti
John S. Robertson
An Austrian Sergeant
Lloyd Carleton
A Country Doctor
Frederick Spencer
His Son
Byron Ongley
Thalberg
B. B. Belcher
Montenegro
Morton H. Weldon
The Chamberlain
Charles Martin
An Officer of the Noble Guard
,
the Emperor of Austria's Bodyguard
Henry P. Davis
The Marquis of Otranto
,
son of Fouche
Charles Henderson
Goubeaux
Don C. Merrifield
Pionnet
{
Bonapartist
}
Henry Clarke
Morchain
{
conspirators
}
Thomas H. Elwood
Guibert
George Klein
Borowski
Frank Goodman
First Police Officer
Ralph Yoerg
First Archduke
,
a child
Walter Butterworth
Second Archduke
,
a child
John Leeman
Maria Louisa
,
second wife of Napoleon I., widow of Count Neipperg
Ida Waterman
The Archduchess Sophia of Austria
Sarah Converse
Theresa de Loget
,
sister of Tiburtius de Loget
Ellie Collmer
The Countess Napoleone Camerata
,
daughter of Napoleon's sister, Elisa Baciocchi
Sarah Perry
Fanny Elssler
Margaret Gordon
Scarampi
,
Mistress of the Robes
Francis Comstock
Mina
,
a maid-of-honor
Edith Scott
An Archduchess
,
a child
Beatrice Morrison
Princes, Princesses, Archdukes, Archduchesses, Maids-of-Honor, Officers, Noble Guard, Masks (Male and Female), Crotian Peasants, Hungarian Peasant, Austrian Soldiers, Police Officers.
The period covered by the play is from 1830 to 1832.
THE DUKE OF REICHSTADT FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
THE FIRST ACT
L'AIGLON
THE FIRST ACT
At Baden, near Vienna, in 1830.
The drawing-room of the villa occupied byMaria Louisa. The walls are painted al fresco in bright colors. The frieze is decorated with a design of sphinxes.
At the back, between two other windows, a window reaching to the ground and forming the entrance from the garden. Beyond, the balustrade of the terrace leading into the garden; a glimpse of lindens and pine-trees. A magnificent day in the beginning of September. Empire furniture of lemonwood decorated with bronze. A large china stove in the centre of the wall on the left. In front of it a door. On the right, two doors. The first leads to the apartments ofMaria Louisa. In front of the window on the left at the back an Erard piano of the period, and a harp. A big table on the right, and against the right wall a small table with shelves filled with books. On the left, facing the audience, a Récamier couch, and a large stand for candlesticks. A great many flowers in vases. Framed engravings on the walls representing the members of the Imperial Family of Austria. A portrait of the Emperor Francis.
At the rise of the curtain a group of elegant ladies is discovered at the further end of the room. Two of them are seated at the piano, with their backs to the audience, playing a duet. Another is at the harp. They are playing at sight, amid much laughter and many interruptions. A lackey ushers in a modestly dressed young girl who is accompanied by an officer of the Austrian Cavalry. Seeing that no one notices their entrance, these two remain standing a moment in a corner. TheCount de Bombellescomes in from the door on the right and goes toward the piano. He sees the young girl, and stops, with a smile.
