THE EAGLET (Translated): A Drama in Six Acts

This new translation of Rostand's 1900 drama includes: - The first modern English version, made for this edition- The complete text, with nothing cut- A cast list and a translator's note prepared for this editionNapoleon's only legitimate son was taken to Vienna as a child, given an Austrian title, raised by his grandfather's court, watched by Metternich's police, and kept from every book that might tell him who his father was. He died at twenty-one without ever having commanded anything. This is his play. Rostand wrote it for Sarah Bernhardt, who played the boy at fifty-five, and it was the biggest theatrical event in France in 1900. Six acts, nearly five thousand lines, and the whole of it turning on a young man trying to work out whether he is a prince, a prisoner, a symbol, or nothing at all - while the most skilful politician in Europe explains to him, patiently and without raising his voice, that he is a piece of furniture. Around him Rostand builds a court of watchers: an Austrian emperor who is fond of him, a French governess who is not what she says she is, an archduchess in love with him, a tailor who is a Bonapartist agent, and Flambeau - an old grenadier of the Grande Armée who has been in every campaign and who is Rostand's one great invention here, the play's engine and its heart. The fourth act ends on the field of Wagram at night, and it is the most famous scene Rostand wrote outside Cyrano. This edition includes a cast list composed for it, since the French text supplies none, and a translator's note on the verse. Night Workers publishes lost French writing in fresh, modern English.