Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (1 April 1868 - 2 December 1918) was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism and is known best for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays contrasted with the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century. Another of Rostand's works, Les Romanesques, was adapted to the musical comedy The Fantasticks.
When Rostand was twenty years old, his first play, a one-act comedy, Le Gant rouge, was performed at the Cluny Theatre, 24 August 1888, but it was almost unnoticed.[4]
In 1890, Rostand published a volume of poems called Les Musardises.[5] The same year he offered a one-act Pierrot play in verse to the director of the Théâtre Français. This gave him the opportunity to write for the state theatre a three-act play, also in verse, as are all Rostand's plays.He considered himself a poet, whether writing plays or poetry.
The resulting play, Les Romanesques, was produced at the Théâtre Français on 21 May 1894. It was a great success and was the start of his career as a dramatist. This play would be adapted in 1960 by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt into the long-running American musical The Fantasticks.
Rostand's next play was written for Sarah Bernhardt. La Princesse Lointaine was based on the story of the 12th-century troubadour Jaufre Rudel and his love for Hodierna of Jerusalem (who is the archetypal princesse lointaine character). This idealistic play opened on 5 April 1895, at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. The part of Mélissinde (based on Hodierna's daughter Melisende of Tripoli) was created by Sarah Bernhardt but the play was not particularly successful. When Berhardt performed it in London later the same year, it received a bad review from George Bernard Shaw but this was not surprising considering Shaw's bias for realism.[4] Rambaldo di Vaqueiras: I Monferrato, 1922 1922 verse drama by Nino Berrini(it) is based on La Princesse Lointaine.
