Dan Snow's History Hit - The Real Cyrano de Bergerac

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

One of the world's much loved stage and screen characters has just returned to the cinema in a new film version starring Peter Dinklage. But what may not be generally known is that Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person who was sharper, funnier and more modern than the romantic hero he inspired.In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Cyrano's biographer Ishbel Addyman, about an extraordinary figure, whose brave, independent and visionary thinking was years ahead of its time.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is an episode of Not Just the Tudors with Professor Susanna Lipscomb,

for you to get into. Enjoy. You've made this stage your personal style. The dramatic muse has fled the building. She scampered off when you started gilding the lily with your great big voice. The poor muse had no choice. That was Peter Dinklage playing Cyrano de Bergerac in the new film Cyrano. Adapted from Erica Schmidt's play, it was directed by Joe Wright. Cyrano is a flawed hero. He has inordinate courage, bravado.

He is witty and brilliant. But unfortunately, he has also a great deal of pride, and it's a pride that stops him being able to exclaim his love for the woman he is in love with. It's not the first time that Cyrano de Béjarac has inspired a film or a play. Gérard Depardieu played the swashbuckling hero opposite Anne Brochet in 1990. Steve Martin was a modern-day Serrano opposite Daryl Hannah in Roxanne in 1987. And above all, there was the famous play by Edmond Rostand, which premiered in Paris in December 1897, which tells the story of a burlesque figure of a man with a very long nose

who woos his beautiful cousin Roxane by proxy. She falls in love with the face of Baron Christian de Noviète, but with the words of Cyrano de Bergerac. Good night. Wait! I could no more stop loving you. I could no more stop loving you. I could no more stop loving you. Then I could stop the sun rising.

Then I can stop the sun rising. Really? My cruel love has never stopped growing. In my soul. From the day it was born there. From the day it was born. There. There!

If your love is cruel, you should have killed it. I tried. It has the strength of Hercules. I tried! It has the strength of... Hercules. Hercules! Got anything better? Shh. Do continue. Please.

Roxanne, my love for you is so powerful. Roxanne, my love for you is so powerful. Roxanne, my love for you is so powerful. It has strangled the two serpents. It has strangled the two serpents. Pride and doubt. But you might be surprised to learn that Cyrano de Béjarac really existed. He was born in Paris in the early 17th century, and he lived by the pen as much as by the

sword. And he wasn't in love with Roxane or anyone of her sex. My guest today is Isbert Adiman, who has written a brilliant biography of the real man. It's called Cyrano, the Life and Legend of Cyrano de Bergerac. Educated at Oxford and Paul Vardy University in Montpellier, Adaman took up fencing in preparation for writing about this legendary swordsman. Ishmael Adaman, I'm so pleased to welcome you to Not Just the Tudors. Thank you for sharing with us the true story of Cyrano de Bajorac, whom many people might not even know was a real person. And that's, I suppose, because there's been so many fictional depictions of his life. This film with Peter

Dinklage is just the latest. Why do you think he's been such an appealing character for so long? I think it is fascinating that the fiction has overtaken the real hero. But actually, I think that the reason for that lies with him. He was making his own myth in his own lifetime. And I think the fascination with him stems from that he was a rebel, a free thinker, fascination with him stems from that. He was a rebel, a free thinker, a sword fighter, wrote science fiction at a time when the term science fiction didn't even exist. He was an extraordinary person and so much larger than life, so unexpected that I think that's part of the reason that his life has had this extraordinary afterlife. And I suppose we first of all ought to start with the fact that he wasn't from Bergerac and his first name wasn't Cyrano. I know, I love it. And both

of those are very much his creation. So he was Parisian. His family owned a small rural estate just outside Paris. He was born in Paris. But within his own lifetime, he had altered that vision of himself. He had joined a very famous Gascon regiment. As in the play, the cadets of Carbon de Casteljalu were chiefly a Gascon regiment, chiefly noblemen of the area where Béjarac is. And so he was already adding that into his legend. But by rights, he should have been known as Savignon de Cyrano. Cyrano is actually

his surname. His family were originally Sardinian. His great-grandfather had worked selling fish, obviously very successfully because the family had managed to buy this small estate outside Paris, but he was not entitled to style himself de Bergerac. And I think he did so and joined that Gascon regiment in order to give himself a greater noble standing than he was strictly entitled to. He would occasionally sign himself Alexandre rather than Savignon, because Alexandre had echoes of Alexander the Great and that idea of martial prowess. Or he also used the name which obviously had echoes of Hercules and the ability to be stronger than everybody else. So he would quite often use Hercule Savignon de Bergerac or Alexandre and always used the de

Bergerac. His family estate was known as Bergerac that's what's interesting so he was legitimately entitled to call himself de Bergerac but it's a bit of a twist because actually it wasn't the Bergerac that we're all thinking of and not the Bergerac that now has lots of statues to him. the Bergerac that now has lots of statues to him. And the thing that most people will know is that he had a hideously big nose. Is that true? No. That one is one of the things that always amazes me about his writing. So he wrote the nose gags. The jokes about big noses weren't stolen by Moliere, but some of his comedy was stolen by Moliere and then later some of his jokes about big noses got used by other comic writers including there's one that he wrote in the Steve Martin film for example there's one in Rostand's play there are some of his jokes were good enough that they're still funny all these years later and actually the

thing about big noses it was part of one of his comic riffs that he went off on he has a reasonably large nose and he was proud of that. The only sort of significant portrait of him is in profile, so he obviously wasn't worried. That was Rostand's creation really more than anything. But it is strange that it comes from something that he was using purely for comic effect, but then got turned around against him. And that happened in quite a few different ways. Some of the things that he wrote to laugh at comic exaggeration of people pretending to be braver than they really were, some of those ended up in his own mouth later on as well

as the sort of fictional layers overtook the reality. Now, one of the gags you're referring to must be that one about his nose arriving everywhere a quarter of an hour before his face. And that's in the rock star with Steve Martin. And it's something that he's written about something else. That's amazing. Yeah, that's right. He wrote it as a joke, yeah, in one of his plays.

And it was purely to mock the stock idiot character. But somehow it ended up getting used and eventually, yeah, turned against him. And I remember from your book that in his novel which we'll come back to he says that small-nosed people are not allowed to breed and that people in the moon tell the time by using the shadow cast by their noses as a form of sundial so it suggests actually pride doesn't it not shame in his nose hilarious yeah absolutely so just going through the list of things that people know about him, the big no's.

And the other thing, of course, is his swordsmanship. And we know that he enlisted in the army. I had no idea until I read your wonderful book that he had joined this Gascon regiment of musketeers, as you said, and that he may have come in contact in real life with Isaac de Porteaux, Henri de Aramis, Armand de Ségur d'Hauteville, the real Portos, Aramis and Artaud of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, and even the real D'Artagnan. Tell us about this. It's so fascinating, isn't it, that some of The Three Musketeers are

also based on real soldiers. And I think there's an interesting parallel with the story of the Three Musketeers between what Rassan was doing, which is that they took the lives of these real soldiers and created this sort of myth that was passing itself off as reality. So there's a preface to the Three Musketeers where he talks about having found a secret manuscript,

which of course is not real, but it gives this element of historical accuracy to the telling of these legendary stories of these amazing men. And I think that's part of the appeal of The Three Musketeers and of the story of Serrano as well. When the play came out and when The Three Musketeers came out, it was a time when France needed to look back at that era of swashbuckling greatness

as a sort of way of reassuring the nation of its own image, which is a very familiar thing that happens in fiction. When times are uncertain, looking back and finding an ideal that we can have more faith in than in the uncertainty of the present day can be quite reassuring. And it seems that he won fame in the army quite quickly through his accomplished swordsman skills. That's not a very good way of putting it, but he was very good with a sword. There was an interesting paradox for the armed forces with dueling. So dueling at the time was almost like an extreme sport. I feel like a lot of the appeal of it for the young men who got involved was that same sense of adrenaline rush, of risk, of being involved in

something which was a craze, but extraordinarily dangerous. And Serrano was absolutely one of the greatest duellists of the age. And as such, when he went into the the army did gain this immediate and incredibly important reputation. I think there are two things about that. The first is that the army themselves were desperate to put an end to duelling because they needed the soldiers to die as cannon fodder and very much not in their own individual questions of honour. So it was very important not to lose the flower of the nobility in arguments with each other in sword fights they needed them to fight on the battlefield so that dueling was illegal but obviously for serrano the great rebel that was one of the real appeals because he loved to defy

authority and anything that was defiance of authority was incredibly appealing to him he also obviously did have extraordinary skill, an amazing sword fighter. And I think what's fascinating though about the duels that the real honor to be gained in a sword fight was if you were fighting for as little reason as possible. So if you fought because you were the one who had been dishonored, you didn't have as great a reputation as if you fought for someone else. There's a strong emphasis in Le Bré, his best friend who wrote the first ever biography of Serrano. He talks about the fact that Serrano always fought as a second and that he wasn't someone who went out picking arguments or fighting for his own quarrels, which is slightly hard to

believe because as a satirist, he was extremely provocative. But I think there was a real paradox there that actually fighting as a second was all the more honourable because you were doing it for the glory rather than because you'd been offended by someone or because you had an axe to grind. And I suppose from a sense of loyalty as well. Absolutely. And that was one of the things that does come through very clearly in all accounts of Serrano and perhaps doesn't survive as well in the legend, but that he was an extraordinarily loyal friend. And he himself says, in truth, it is a very great consolation to me to be hated because

I am loved, to find enemies everywhere because I have friends everywhere, and to see that my unhappiness stems from my good fortune. Exactly. So that gives us a real sense of a man who kind of lives extremely. You know, he has friends and he has enemies and he sort of joys in both. Absolutely. And extreme is definitely the word because what Le Bré says about his very early days in the cadets, and I think there's definitely a sense that he had to do this, but he established his reputation very early on by fighting many duels. And that I think may have happened because having joined a Gascon regiment as a Parisian, he was the outsider and he needed to establish himself. He needed to find friends. he needed to not be that outsider if he was going to get on and i think the route that he chose was provocation and sword fighting because the gascons had this reputation of being the boldest the bravest the most talented swordsman and so yeah he decided to try and beat them at their own game. Now, the context of his joining the army is the Thirty Years' War, which kicked off in the year of his birth. And he went on active service, but was in the army in the end for less than two years. What was his experience? I think he had an awakening to the realities of war because he went in as this bold, swashbuckling

young man keen to take part in dueling and to join this brotherhood. And then he had a very rude awakening to what he then went on to call the channel of all injustice. And I think one of the things that would have been particularly horrifying was the way that the army had to sustain themselves. They were often not paid. They had to use the surrounding area and steal. And there was a lot of mistreatment of the people around who were not the enemy, the people where they were fighting. But equally also, he was very badly injured. And he took part in the siege of M Mouzant and the Siege of Arras. And both of those were bleak, grim encounters, which would

have been absolutely horrifying. And he definitely was profoundly disenchanted with the army and with the idea of war. He writes later that there can never be any reason. He talks about being a citizen of humanity, which to us is an extraordinary thing to see happening at that stage when there was so much conflict. He absolutely determined to rise above the issues between nations. And in fact, when he went on to write a science fiction novel, of the issues between nations. And in fact, when he went on to write a science fiction novel, he includes the work of an important influence because that was very important to him. He didn't like to not acknowledge any sources.

But one of the main characters of the source text was a Spaniard. And the Spanish were the enemy in that war. But he and this Spaniard in his book become really good friends and go through this kind of crazy adventure together. So when I was doing the research for the book, I came across this heartbreaking aside written in the back of a family Bible. It's written there in the final year of the 30 Years War. And I think it gives a really good insight into the realities of what was actually going on. They say that the terrible war is over now, but there is still no sign of peace.

Envy, hatred and greed are everywhere. They are all the war has brought us. We live like animals eating bark and grass. No one could ever have imagined that such things would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God, but we still believe that God has not abandoned us, but we must unite and help one another. And I think it's fascinating to see that was in a small village somebody who had seen the realities of the conflict on the ground which indeed Serrano had and it's interesting to me to see that level of doubt and fear and because Serrano was a passionate atheist and there have been people

who've argued that isn't possible in the early modern period. So I think it's really interesting to see written in a family Bible, this idea of losing faith because of the horror of what humanity is doing. And obviously, in that particular instance, the end, but we still believe that God has not abandoned us, we must unite and help one another. That absolutely is what Serrano was trying to do. I think he desperately wanted to try to write something that could be inspirational, that could unite people, but very much not from a perspective of faith in a divine, benevolent, protective God. That is really interesting in the context of what was going on at the time. This is History's Heroes.

People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Can we talk about what happened, probably, some point after he came back from the war and is his most famous exploit?

This almost fantastical story of him having a duel with a hundred men. Did it happen? It did happen. It's well documented. Le Bray gives several noble witnesses, including the man who went on to become Serrano's patron and who therefore was important in the production of the works when they were eventually printed, which didn't happen in his lifetime. It's unlikely

there were a hundred of them. There are two versions of the fight with a hundred men. One suggests, in keeping with what we've already talked about, this idea of Serrano as only ever fighting for his friends. So there is the version which appears in the play where he was there to protect Liniere, a fellow poet and a fellow troublemaker. That version he goes to protect his friend from an attack, an ambush, which he hears is going to happen. I think that's certainly possible. We don't have a definite proof of exactly why the attack happened. I think given the nature of his later career, it's very likely that actually it was an ambush aimed at Serrano himself. He was assassinated.

And this, I think, was one of the first attempts to assassinate him. And foolishly, they sent nine. He killed two people and wounded seven. You've got to imagine some probably ran away. I think it was probably at least 10. And one of the things I loved about the new film is that they have taken that little bit of reality that was not in the play

and changed it from the duel with 100 men to he says before it happens, I could fight 100 men. And then in the actual attack, he's like 10 will do, which I thought was great because that's quite close to the reality. There were probably around 10, 12, something like that. But yes, extraordinary.

And because he had this audience, he did fight single handedly against that crowd, who he defeated. Extraordinary. You can see why people have wanted to tell his story so often, because that moment itself is something we've seen superheroes do now for, you know, decades, but actually, it has this 17th century origin, even if it is a mere 10, as opposed to 10 times as many, it's an extraordinary thing to do. It's absolutely extraordinary. And I think what's also fascinating, and returns us to that idea of why we still talking about him now, is that there's an element that must have been stage managed. He had an audience, there were people there to be the

witnesses. He took people with him and asked them not to get involved. They didn't fight, but they watched what happened. And it speaks to his personality, doesn't it? In that he was so confident going into this situation. Let's talk a bit about then his life of the mind. He came in contact with a great philosopher and mathematician, Pierre Gassendi. What impact do you think he had on Cyrano? Gassendi's impact on him was absolutely huge. He was a really inspiring teacher. And I think that made a huge difference to Serrano. He was fascinated by the new philosophy, and in particular, in the scientific revolution. So Gassendi as a mathematician was someone who was very interested in that as well,

and who I think opened his mind to this extraordinary paradigm shift that was taking place in what was known at the time as natural philosophy, but what we would see as astronomy and the science of the time. So in particular, I'm thinking of Galileo's revelations about the universe. So what was mind blowing, and I think part of the fascination for Serrano is that it was, of course, a challenge to authority, and in particular, a challenge to authority and in particular a challenge to biblical authority because what had happened was the new technology of the telescope had allowed observations and calculations of astronomical features to happen which had been

previously impossible and that had caused this amazing revelation about the nature of the universe. So in previous and in biblical teaching, the world was the center of the universe and we were this still point around which everything else moved, which obviously, actually the mathematical calculations that Galileo was engaged in proved that didn't work. But also Galileo's observations of the moon, for example, were particularly fascinating to Serrano because they revealed geographical features on the moon, so the mountains on the moon, valleys, craters. So Serrano took that a step further and imagined that the moon could therefore be a planet and could be inhabited. And the reason that he was so interested in doing that, I think, was partly in order to challenge authority to suggest, we assume we know everything, we assume

we are the prime rational creature, because that's what the Bible teaches us. But he always wanted to challenge that and to say, actually, the aliens look down on us, and they think that we are foolish and misguided and that we don't understand the reality of the universe that we live in. Which has its echo in what was widely said at the time about Galileo when on trial, that he was forced obviously to recant his observations, but that he whispered as he left, meaning you can make me say it, but of course it moves, still it moves. simorve, meaning you can make me say it, but of course it moves, still it moves. So what you're talking about is this two-part science fiction novel that Cyrano writes, The Voyage to the Moon, The Voyage to the Sun, published after his death. It is absolutely

chock full of ideas that throw forward to the future in the same way as Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks do. Tell us some of those. It's the same way as Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks do. Tell us some of those. It's funny that you should mention da Vinci actually because in his notebooks he specifically mentions the fact that the failure to ask questions and to look to books instead of the real world is where natural philosophy doesn't advance and that da Vinci's notebooks are all about observations of everything he saw around him, spirit of questioning that is exactly what Serrano was also very inspired by and very interested in and because of his refusal to accept authority he echoed that idea of da Vinci's that you shouldn't be believing something because someone tells you it. You should be making observations.

You should be asking questions. You should be investigating always. So what would we recognise from Voyage to the Moon that is just completely scientifically fictional at the time that Cyril was writing it? There are some extraordinary things. He dreamt up the idea of hot air balloons, rocket propulsion. My favourite, though, is Darwinism. He was a much better naturalist than he was an astrophysicist. His mathematical abilities, I don't think were quite up there. And a lot of the time,

the ideas that he comes up with for the new science don't always follow, for example, the idea that the moon and the sun were habitable. But actually, when it comes to close observation of the natural world, he's unbeatable. And so one of the things that he wrote is this extraordinary precursor to Darwinism, where he talks about how creation could have happened through a process which we recognize as evolution. Obviously, he doesn't name it that. So the precursor to Darwinism. indeed, if the oak had not been formed. A little less of certain forms, and it could have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder, some heather, or some moss. A few more of other certain forms, and it could have been a sensitive plant, an oyster, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, a monkey, a man. Now, it was very bold to be publishing such things at this time. And when you think about what had happened to Galileo,

it is an age in which you can be prosecuted for what you say. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Absolutely.

And to talk about creation in that way, in his play, he used the fact that it was a play about antiquity, La Morte d'Agrippine, his tragedy that he wrote. He actually includes the line, these gods that man has created and who did not create man. So he was absolutely prepared to state

creation doesn't require a deity. And actually, I'll continue if that's OK, because I think there's another little section which recalls the work of Richard Dawkins explaining what we understand now about evolutionary biology. And this was written in the 17th century purely by somebody who had this extraordinary free thinking spirit and a close observation of the natural world. It's put in the mouth of the alien, explaining to the ignorant human how things work. You are surprised that this matter, mixed up pell-mell by chance, should have built up a man,

since so many things are necessary to the construction of his being. But you do not know that this matter moving towards the design of a man has stopped a hundred million times on the way to form sometimes a stone, sometimes lead, sometimes coral, sometimes a flower, sometimes a comet, for the excess or the lack of certain forms which were necessary or superfluous to the design of a man. It is not marvellous that an infinite quantity of matter, changing and moving continually, should have met together to form the few animals, vegetables and minerals that we see. The other thing I like about Forge the Moon is that his protagonist,

Diacona, is put on trial by the lunar authorities for insisting he comes from the Earth. by the lunar authorities for insisting he comes from the Earth. And again, this speaks to this sort of sense of importance of freedom of speech. But the other thing we'll draw about his scepticism is that this isn't just the age of the scientific revolution. This is also a time when alleged witches were being persecuted and prosecuted and executed across Europe. And Cyrano argues against their existence. This is extraordinary in itself. What did he say about that? He says explicitly that we should not believe of a man anything except that which is human. And he says that as a direct response to this idea of witchcraft, of spirits and of demonology,

of witchcraft, of spirits, and of demonology, because those were really important elements of the Catholic hegemony. And there were people writing at the time who specifically said to deny witches is to deny God. And I think that's one of the reasons he was so motivated to argue against witchcraft. Serrano wrote two letters about witchcraft. One is for witches and the other is against witchcraft. Theoretically, one is a defense of the idea that witchcraft is real and the other is an attack on a complete dismantling and debunking of witchcraft. Of course, actually, they're both very passionately anti the idea of witchcraft being real which in itself is extraordinary at the time and brave and risky position to take the four which is an assembling of all of the possible examples of every bit of craziness that was associated with witchcraft all put together

into one over-the-top description and by putting every single bit of description together, he foregrounds the ridiculousness of what's being claimed. Because when you have one bit of folklore, it can sound eerie. But when you put all of it together, it starts to sound insane. As indeed, to us, many of these beliefs did. But it's very interesting that we have somebody standing up and saying this sort of stuff at the time it's interesting i think partly serrano was inspired by montaigne montaigne was inspired to be skeptical of the stories of witchcraft he pointed out suffering forces even innocence to lie he realized that difficulty of the way that the women were interrogated forces the answers to not be real

but actually also serrano it was all about this idea of not assuming authority is anything other than completely fallible he has a wonderful line where he says our fathers were wrong in times past their descendants are wrong now ours will be wrong one day. Oh, I like that. Now, if we move back from the life of the mind to the life of the body, it seems that there's very little evidence for what was going on in Cyrano de Bajorac's life between 1641 and 1648, if I've read your book correctly. But there is a reference that survives to a man called Alessandre de Cyrano-Bergerac being treated for four months for a secret illness. What do you think that was?

I think it was almost certainly his wounds from the war. He was very badly injured. And what's happened is because of that reference to secret, I think it's unlikely that's significant. But unfortunately, because that word secret is in there, it's been co-opted by some of the backlash against Serrano that happened after his death. You couldn't risk obviously questioning him when he was still there in a swordsman. But there were accusations made that he was suffering from syphilis, which I don't think is what was going on. But that's what that has been used to argue, because syphilis is associated with madness. And madness was a very

important tool in undermining Serrano's work. Because actually, to us, from a modern perspective, he's been called an eminently sane and courageous mind because actually to us reading what he wrote it's extraordinary that he was writing the things that he did but at the time it looked like madness and so the secret illness has very much been viewed as that i think it's very unlikely i think barber surgeons didn't actually know what they were doing there's a couple of references in serrano about being saved because your doctor dies before you do. Part of the problem is that they needed to keep their mysteries. So the secret illness is probably much more likely that's because guarding the mysteries of medical knowledge rather than actually that there was anything particularly secret about what

was wrong with him. Okay, so beyond being completely speculative, we don't know anything about syphilis, but do we know anything about his sex life, she asks prudently. Was there a Roxanne or a Roxo? So Roxanne did exist. Roxanne was Madeleine Robineau, his cousin, who was a very unlikely source of any romantic involvement with the real Serrano. She did have a real Christiane de Neuvillette. So she married Christiane, as in the play. However, he died very soon after, as in the play as well, on the battlefield. She was heartbroken and she became obsessed with the idea of those who die without the chance to repent. And so she wanted to try and save his soul. She went to her confessor and begged to be allowed to save his soul by dying in

his place. Was there anything she could do to buy back his eternal life? And obviously the confessor had to say to her, her no it doesn't work like that that's not possible but as a result she was so determined that she needed to save other people that she went bankrupt giving away all her money to people in debtors prison trying to set them free going and begging and pleading with people who'd got themselves into trouble and were on the verge of death to try and draw them back from this terrible thing that had happened to her husband. She was part of Serrano's family and I think that they were close but not in the way in the book and certainly reading the works it becomes very clear that Serrano is a gay icon

and very definitely wouldn't have been interested in her. He was in an unhappy gay love triangle and I think when I wrote the book, it was very important to me not to speculate too much. I felt like his sex life, his romantic life was none of my business. And partly because it was very much the focus of the play. I felt that was the least interesting thing about him in some ways. To a certain extent now, I regret the fact that he isn't embraced more readily as the amazing, wonderful gay icon that he is. That part of his rebellion, part of his free thinking, part of his courage was about the fact that he refused to ever consider that being gay was in any way something that he should hide. And

the books contain beautiful homoeroticism. And I think he was really proud of who he was. And that, again, extraordinarily modern, extraordinarily unexpected. And so I slightly regret that I didn't foreground that more and give more emphasis on the fact that partly being not part of the mainstream in that way was also what liberated him to be not part of the mainstream in so much of his intellectual interests. Now you've mentioned his friend Henri Lebray, who was a friend throughout his life. Was he very important in shaping Serrano's memory? Absolutely. Lebray's contribution is huge because he was always by Serrano's side they were there from children actually their schooling took place together and when Serrano was alive his publication was

only manuscript publication so his works were shared in manuscript form and partly because as survives in the play he couldn't allow any noble patron to have any kind of editorial control. And therefore he didn't get the money to put through a print publication because he would have needed a noble patron to do that. And he didn't want to risk having to change anything. But what Le Bray did after Serrano's death was he supervised and put together

the first ever edition, the first print publication of Serrano's work. And if he had a friend, he also had an enemy. Where does Charles Corpeau d'Assisi come in? How did he become his nemesis? He was a very interesting character. Serrano attended the lessons of Pierre Gassendi, which were taking place in the household of the young man La Chapelle, who de Soucy was a sexual predator. And he had this retinue of page boys. And at that stage, he'd become interested in La Chapelle and he was part of this circle who were attending these lessons. De Soucy, like a lot of predators, was extremely charming, very funny, self-deprecating, and he had both Serrano and La Chapelle very much in his thrall. And there was this sort of triangular relationship, which we don't have a lot of evidence, but what we do have, there are two, I think, quite significant mentions of that situation. The first, Serrano talks about his anger against that person springing from how much he had cared about that person.

And that sense of being betrayed and realizing the reality of who someone really is. De Soussi, on the other hand, he makes the joke himself that he waited until after Serrano was dead and therefore there was no danger to criticizing him but he does write some of the most scurrilous attacks on Serrano that appeared immediately after his death so he is to some extent the source of some of the misinformation what led to his untimely death I would suggest that his work the manuscript circulation of the ideas that he was putting forth were really dangerous. They were part of the idea of the libertin, the free thinkers, and they were therefore a huge challenge to the Catholic hegemony. He did write a letter about a

murderous Jesuit. And I think it is very likely that was based on a real threat to his life. And his death was an assassination. He was in the carriage of the Duc d'Arpagent, as at that point he had taken a noble patron, and the carriage was ambushed and attacked at close range, and he was shot. And he was only 36 years old. It's amazing that he's this extraordinary famous character, this sort of hero, and has

lived on for so many years and actually himself lived for so few. It is extraordinary. And I think it always blows my mind that in the biography that Le Bray wrote to add to the publication of the works, he talks about Serrano himself regretting having wasted those 36 years and that Serrano always felt that he hadn't done enough and that he had so many beautiful days wasted, is how he puts it, because he felt that he hadn't achieved as much as he should have done in that time. And then he seems to develop this reputation, as you've already alluded to, as a madman and something I had no idea about. Given that he was a man who detested plagiarism, he was plagiarized by no less than Molière. Tell us about the galère and why we remember the plagiarist and not the

originator of the phrase. I think the reason that Molière gets the credit for that scene, so galère is still used today in France. It's used to mean being in difficulty, something having gone terribly wrong. Galère, everything's gone wrong. And it comes from a scene which Serrano originally wrote in his comedy. There's a scene where they get kidnapped onto a galley and the father is a miser and doesn't want to pay the ransom to release his son from this kidnapping which has all been staged it's all a trick but he won't accept he just keeps asking how did he get in the galley the question is repeated and repeated to this comic effect because he's sticking on this one

point of but how could he have got there because actually what we know as the audience is that he just doesn't want to pay moliere took the entire the entire scene, slightly rewrote it, improved it. Moliere was a much better playwright than Serrano. Serrano was never an actor. Moliere was. Serrano didn't have that apprenticeship in the theatre that Moliere had. So Moliere gets the credit because Moliere did it better. But it is interesting, Serrano is forgotten,

despite being the originator, despite having come up with the original idea, because he died, he couldn't take ownership of it. And also, Moliere was a much, much more successful playwright. So here we have it. You've given us a picture of a man who has been remembered as a romantic, swashbuckling, occasionally mad, heterosexual hero. And in actual fact, you've given us a picture of someone who was a brilliant thinker, a free thinker, almost certainly an atheist, almost certainly gay, and who was challenging the conventions of the period in which he was living, who was known as much for his mind as for his sword. Thank you so much for letting us see the real Cyrano de Boucherac.

Isabel Allimagne, your book was wonderful, and this interview has been a great joy. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening, everyone. That was an episode of not just the tudors on my feed professor susanna lipscomb is a complete legend she's one of my greatest friends and colleagues in the world of history if you enjoyed it please head over to not just the tudors wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe and then rate and review and all that kind of thing share it with friends it just makes a really big difference to us and we're're really, really grateful for you guys doing that. Thank you very much. This is History's Heroes.

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