Résumé: Cyrano de Bergerac, the character, the play, the legacy, is a timeless literary herald due to its theme. Existence in a contrived reality constitutes a standard motif of Romanticism. Literature itself is able to assume the bittersweet but themed predictability that concrete reality lacks. It pretends no circumstance is too outrageous or too wonderful, seamlessly binding the ruthlessly sinister and the impossibly good. A contrived existence in literature can be interpreted as a dream world in which the character chooses to envelop himself, blocking out society's standards and inverting the impossible. This shadow often sadly results in the opposite of the character's original intentions because it is surreal. The main use of this method by Cyrano is in writing sonnets for Christian's dictation to Roxane. In an abstract way, Cyrano vents his own feelings, but credits his the resulting glory to a handsome protégé. A secondary example is the finality in Roxane's tragic statement upon realizing that it was the dying Cyrano she loved, and not Christian. "I never loved but one man in my life, and I have lost him twice". She has finally allowed the vale of deception to be lifted, finding in its place a life misspent. Not unlike a certain Shakespearean character of the same era, she realizes herself to be a woman who has loved not wisely but well. Shaped by a theme of false reality's ultimately unhappy demise, the play is an extraordinary work magnifying life's complications.