In the following essay, an anonymous critic focuses on the irony in Cyrano de Bergerac, arguing that Rostand intended the play to be a satire, and not, as it was being hailed, as a serious drama.

I suspect, nay, I believe, that nothing could be aesthetically funnier than [M. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac ] ... is, save the sentiment, au grand serieux, that has been lavished upon it as if it were a real drama instead of a satirical extravaganza, (p. 118)

The rollicking hyperbole, the color far too high for reality with which M. Rostand has heightened the effectiveness of all [the] historic part of his material is alone enough to release him from the imputation of having himself taken his Cyrano as seriously as his public has. He has employed his historic sense in the rehabilitation of seventeenth century Paris; but neither merely as a savant nor merely...