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Act 2, Scene 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cyrano De Bergerac, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Appearances and Identity
The Many Kinds of Love
Panache
Social Hierarchy and the Romantic Ideal
Loyalty and Honor
Summary
Analysis
Two children walk into Ragueneau’s pastry shop, asking for pies. Ragueneau prepares the pies but finds he has nothing in which to wrap them. Reluctantly, he takes some of the verses Lise has just shown him, and chooses a love sonnet “to Phillis” to wrap the pies. The children accept their food. As they’re about to leave the shop, Ragueneau whispers to them to give him back the sonnet, and the children do so. He reads the sonnet to himself, whispering the name, “Phillis.”
Ragueneau is a typical comic character—he’s exaggeratedly afraid of his own wife, reversing the stereotypical family structure of the strong husband and the meek, loving wife. Now more than ever, it’s clear that Ragueneau, like Cyrano, favors poetry and art over dollars and cents.
Themes
