Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), French author of romantic plays, mostly in verse, that provided strong roles for several generations of actors. He was born in Marseille. His first drama, Les Romanesques (The Romantics), was produced in Paris in 1894; its story of innocent young love was adapted in The Fantasticks (1960), an American musical with the longest run in theatrical history. Rostand achieved international fame with Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), a brilliant verse play based on the life of an actual person, Cyrano has become a theatrical classic. The title role—that of a long-nosed, star-crossed poet—has been performed by many famous actors, including the French actor Benoît Constant Coquelin and the Americans Richard Mansfield, Walter Hampden, and José Ferrer. Rostand's next play, L'aiglon (The Eaglet, 1900), had for its hero the unhappy son of Napoleon; the role was first played by the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. In 1910 the fantasy Chantecler, Rostand's last play, was performed with the French actor Sacha Guitry in the title part; the role was played in English by the American actress Maude Adams.