•Why it earns a slot
Rostand's play gave world literature its defining image of eloquence masking heartbreak, and the balcony scene in which Cyrano speaks his own love through another man's lips remains one of the most structurally ingenious and emotionally devastating sequences in dramatic writing.
Cyrano de Bergerac, a brilliant Gascon soldier-poet with a famously enormous nose, secretly loves his cousin Roxane but believes his ugliness makes him unworthy of her. He ghostwrites passionate letters and speeches for the handsome but tongue-tied Christian de Neuvillette, allowing Christian to win Roxane's heart while Cyrano suffers in silence. The deception endures through war, Christian's death, and fifteen years of widowhood, until Roxane finally understands the truth only as Cyrano lies dying.
This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.