Who He Is
Cardenio is the young Andalusian of good lineage whom Don Quixote and Sancho meet in the Sierra Morena as a naked man, with a black beard and torn tawny velvet breeches, leaping from rock to rock (ch. XXIII of Part One). The book calls him the Ragged One, or the Ragged Man of Ill Figure, before giving him his name. He came to the sierra after seeing Luscinda say yes to Don Fernando, the friend to whom he himself had shown her, and he lives on the alms of goatherds and on fits of madness that seize him from time to time (ch. XXIV of Part One). He wants to marry Luscinda; he fears losing her since Don Fernando began to praise her, and confesses that the fear was not for Luscinda but for his own fortune (ch. XXIV of Part One); he knows verses and courtesy, and sings redondillas of disdain and a sonnet to holy friendship (ch. XXVII of Part One); and he is mistaken in trusting everything to a man he took for a friend, and in keeping silent behind a tapestry when he should have spoken (ch. XXVII of Part One). His story, told in two tenses, is one of the embedded narratives of Part One and closes at the inn, with the reunion of the betrayed (ch. XXXVI of Part One).
Trajectory
In ch. XXIII of Part One, the gentleman and Sancho find in the sierra a valise with fine Holland shirts, a small heap of gold crowns, and a little memorandum book in which there is a sonnet and a letter:
Desechásteme, ¡oh ingrata!, por quien tiene más, no por quien vale más que yo; mas si la virtud fuera riqueza que se estimara, no envidiara yo dichas ajenas ni llorara desdichas propias, you rejected me, O ungrateful woman, for one who has more, not for one who is worth more than I; but if virtue were a riches that was esteemed, I would not envy other people's fortunes nor weep my own misfortunes.
The letter is addressed to an ungrateful woman without a name and gives the reason for the disdain: the rival has more, not more worth. The sender asks for nothing; he wants only that the wrongs of her husband remain hidden, so that she will not regret it and he will not take vengeance for what he does not desire. Don Quixote concludes what the text says, a scorned lover, and then sees on the top of the hill a man leaping from rock to rock; he cannot catch him, because Rocinante is short-stepping and phlegmatic. In ch. XXIV of Part One he meets him, and the Ragged One, who has nothing to pay with but good wishes, asks for something to eat and then sets a condition for telling his story:
Si gustáis, señores, que os diga en breves razones la inmensidad de mis desventuras, habéisme de prometer de que con ninguna pregunta, ni otra cosa, no interromperéis el hilo de mi triste historia; porque en el punto que lo hagáis, en ése se quedará lo que fuere contando, if you wish, gentlemen, that I tell you in brief words the immensity of my misfortunes, you must promise me that with no question, nor in any other way, you will interrupt the thread of my sad story; for at the moment you do, there it will remain, whatever I may have been telling.
Recalling his misfortunes serves him only to add others, and the less they ask him, the sooner he finishes. The narrator links the scene to the tale of Sancho's goats, which was also left pending by a question; here, the one who will interrupt is the listener who promised to keep silent. Cardenio says that he loved Luscinda from their earliest years, that the families of both knew and almost arranged the marriage, that her father refused him entry to the house in the manner of the parents of Thisbe, and that, to ask for her as his wife, he went to find his own father with a letter from Duke Ricardo, who wanted him as companion to his eldest son. In the duke's house the second son, Don Fernando, became his friend and confided to him his love for a rich and beautiful farm girl to whom he had decided to give his word as husband. The friend, to divert him, proposed that the two go to Cardenio's city; by then, it was learned later, Don Fernando had enjoyed the farm girl and was waiting for an occasion to reveal himself safely. Cardenio speaks of him with a judgment:
como el amor en los mozos, por la mayor parte, no lo es, sino apetito, el cual, como tiene por último fin el deleite, en llegando a alcanzarle se acaba y ha de volver atrás aquello que parecía amor, porque no puede pasar adelante del término que le puso naturaleza, el cual término no le puso a lo que es verdadero amor, as love in young men, for the most part, is not, but appetite, which, since its ultimate end is pleasure, when it reaches it, comes to an end and must turn back on what seemed to be love, because it cannot go beyond the limit that nature set for it, which limit it did not set for true love.
Cardenio says this already knowing what came afterward, and the final qualification, the limit that does not exist for true love, is the measure with which he judges his own. What comes next is that he himself, by the law of friendship, shows Luscinda to Don Fernando, and Don Fernando, seeing her, forgets all the beauties seen before. On reaching the book of chivalry that Luscinda had asked for, Amadís of Gaul, Don Quixote interrupts him with praises of chivalry and breaks the promise to keep silent. Cardenio lets his head fall to his chest and, after a silence in which the gentleman twice asks him to continue, says that the rogue Master Elisabat was living in sin with Queen Madásima. The gentleman answers with great anger:
¡Estraño caso; que así volvió por ella como si verdaderamente fuera su verdadera y natural señora: tal le tenían sus descomulgados libros!, strange affair, that he defended her thus, as if she truly were his true and natural lady: such was the hold his excommunicated books had on him!
The narrator interrupts the scene to say what the reader already sees: the gentleman defends a queen from a book as if she were his own lady, and defends her with the formula of the knightly challenge. The madness of Cardenio and that of Don Quixote meet there: each takes as an offense to himself what is said of someone who is not present, and that is what sets them to strike one another. Cardenio hurls a stone at the gentleman's chest, knocks Sancho down with a punch, tramples his ribs, and goes to hide in the mountain. In ch. XXV of Part One, Sancho asks his master why he defended the queen against a madman, and the gentleman answers that the knight-errant is obliged, against the sane and the mad alike, to defend the honor of women.
In ch. XXVII of Part One, the priest and the barber, who came to fetch the gentleman, hear a voice without instrument sing a redondilla of disdain, jealousy, and absence, and then a sonnet to holy friendship, verses of discreet courtiers and not of rustic herdsmen. They come upon Cardenio, who is then in his full senses, free of the furious fit, and who tells whoever wants to hear the cause, so that the sane will not be startled by the effects. Now he tells the ending, which Don Quixote had interrupted. A note from Luscinda, which Don Fernando found in a book of Amadís of Gaul, made her, in his eyes, one of the most discreet women of her time and set him on the path to destroying his friend. Don Fernando sends him to his elder brother, to get money to pay for six horses bought on purpose so as to have his friend away, and asks for Luscinda's hand. Cardenio returns, hides behind the tapestries of the hall, where he sees without being seen, and hears the priest ask Luscinda whether she accepts Don Fernando:
¡Ah, loco de mí, ahora que estoy ausente y lejos del peligro, digo que había de hacer lo que no hice!, ah, fool that I am, now that I am absent and far from danger, I say I should have done what I did not do!
Cardenio recounts the moment and, in the middle of the telling, shouts what he should have shouted from behind the tapestry. The one speaking already knows he did not shout, and the remorse comes out in the form of an accusation against himself: he was a coward and a fool. He does not say what held him back, and the text leaves two reasons at hand: fear of losing everything right there, or the hope still alive that Luscinda's answer would save him. He expected her to draw the dagger to prove herself, or to loosen her tongue into some truth or disillusionment that would serve him, and what he hears is a feeble voice:
cuando yo pensé que sacaba la daga para acreditarse, o desataba la lengua para decir alguna verdad o desengaño que en mi provecho redundase, oigo que dijo con voz desmayada y flaca: ''Sí quiero'', when I thought she was drawing the dagger to prove herself, or loosening her tongue to say some truth or disillusionment that would benefit me, I hear her say in a faint and feeble voice: "Yes, I do."
Cardenio hears the words of one who yields and takes them as betrayal, because he had placed his hope in the dagger. The text admits other readings: that she says yes without meaning it, faint, or that she says it to spare her father and his friend. She falls into her mother's arms soon after, and Cardenio keeps only that yes, without knowing what the paper found in her bosom says. He leaves the house, takes the mule, and in the countryside lets loose his tongue in curses against Luscinda and Don Fernando, until he excuses her, saying that a sheltered maiden could not disobey her parents, and then returns to accuse her of little love, little judgment, and much ambition. He walks three days through the sierra, lives in the hollow of a cork oak, and attacks shepherds when the fit seizes him. He ends by saying that he does not want health without Luscinda.
In ch. XXVIII of Part One, when the farm lad washing his feet in the stream turns out to be a fair-haired woman, he tells the priest in a low voice that, if she is not Luscinda, she is not a human person but a divine one. It is Dorothea, also betrayed by Don Fernando. In ch. XXIX of Part One, after hearing her story, the unhappy man whom Luscinda called her husband reveals himself and proposes a hope: since Luscinda cannot marry Don Fernando for being his, nor Don Fernando her for being hers, heaven may still restore to each what is his own. Then he swears:
yo os juro, por la fe de caballero y de cristiano, de no desampararos hasta veros en poder de don Fernando, y que, cuando con razones no le pudiere atraer a que conozca lo que os debe, de usar entonces la libertad que me concede el ser caballero, y poder con justo título desafialle, I swear to you, by the faith of a knight and of a Christian, not to abandon you until I see you in the power of Don Fernando, and that, when with reasons I cannot draw him to acknowledge what he owes you, I will then use the liberty that being a knight grants me, and may with just title challenge him.
Cardenio sets his own revenge aside to come to the aid of Dorothea's, and makes her offense the cause to be defended. At the moment of offering the sword, he, who a few days earlier called himself without consolation, now speaks like a knight: the word of a knight and of a Christian gives him a role that the madness of the sierra did not give. It may be strength of spirit, and it may be that helping another serves him as a remedy for himself. In ch. XXXVI of Part One, at the inn, when the masked woman in white arrives and sighs, Cardenio hides in Don Quixote's room, recognizes the voice on the other side of the door, and shouts; he rushes out in terror and finds Don Fernando embracing Luscinda. Luscinda, who recognized him by the sigh, speaks to him there already:
Notad cómo el cielo, por desusados y a nosotros encubiertos caminos, me ha puesto a mi verdadero esposo delante. Y bien sabéis por mil costosas experiencias que sola la muerte fuera bastante para borrarle de mi memoria, note how heaven, by unusual and to us hidden paths, has placed my true husband before me. And you know well, from a thousand costly experiences, that only death would be enough to erase him from my memory.
She does not ask Don Fernando to release her out of pity, but because of who he is, and she shows him that heaven itself placed her true husband before her. She appeals to what he already knows, that only death would make her forget him, and offers her own life before her husband, which disarms the threat: what he can take from her is not what he wants. When Dorothea kneels and wins over Don Fernando, Cardenio takes Luscinda in his arms. In ch. XXXVII of Part One, he offers to continue the fiction of Princess Micomicona with Luscinda in the role of Dorothea, but Don Fernando prefers that Dorothea continue. In ch. XLII of Part One, he is one of those whom the captive calls aside to ask advice on whether to make himself known to his brother the magistrate; in ch. XLV of Part One, he confirms the trick of the helmet with the barber and Don Fernando; in ch. XLVII of Part One, with Don Fernando, he resolves to hasten the departure so that Sancho does not come to his senses, hangs the shield from one side of Rocinante's saddle and the basin from the other, places the constables beside the cart, and stays at the inn when the gentleman leaves in the cage.
Themes Embodied
Cardenio is Love that is lost through trust. The book shows him loving within the rule, asking for her hand through his parents, and losing through two trusts: the one he gives to his friend and the one he placed in Luscinda's dagger. The counterpoint is Don Quixote, who loves from hearsay and loses nothing, because he has staked nothing (ch. XXIV of Part One, ch. XXVII of Part One).
His Madness is the exact counterpart of the gentleman's. He goes mad with a reason (what Luscinda said behind the tapestry); the gentleman, imitating Amadís in ch. XXV of Part One, decides to go mad without reason, because the value lies in showing the lady what he would do for her. Cardenio's madness comes and goes, and the narrator says he has fits; that of Don Quixote neither comes nor goes, it is method. The two meet in ch. XXIV of Part One, around Madásima, and it is the gentleman who takes the stone.
In Honor and Reputation, the story of Cardenio and Dorothea shows the price of a given word not kept: Don Fernando gives his word as husband to a farm girl and breaks it, then snatches Luscinda from the convent. The book resolves it with the argument of symmetry, which Dorothea formulates (he cannot be Luscinda's because he is hers, nor Luscinda's because she is Cardenio's, ch. XXXVI of Part One), and with the rule that a knight keeps what he has promised.
Divergent Readings
The book offers two reasons why Cardenio did not shout behind the tapestry, and it does not decide. The text of ch. XXVII of Part One leaves at hand the fear of losing everything right there, and the hope that Luscinda would save him; the text of ch. XXIX of Part One shows a Cardenio who, not knowing what the faint and the paper had said, left too early. The doubt decides whether he is, as he says of himself, a coward and a fool, or a man who expected from his beloved what the beloved could not give.
The readings also diverge on what the encounter with Don Quixote does to him. Cardenio is the first to whom the gentleman offers help to weep his misfortune, and the first to strike him for defending a queen from a book (ch. XXIV of Part One). Whoever reads it as an encounter of two madmen sees a mirror; whoever reads it for the contrast sees a madman by motive beside a madman by method.
Cardenio's outcome has two readings. Whoever reads it as a reward sees in it the justice of a fiction in which the truth wins out when everyone is present (ch. XXXVI of Part One). Whoever reads it as chance sees that he recovers Luscinda only because Don Fernando, surrounded, yields to an argument that is not one of love, and the book takes care to say that what disarms Don Fernando is the truth he cannot deny. Against the first reading it is worth recalling that the happy ending depends on Dorothea, not on Cardenio; against the second, that Cardenio, before the scene was resolved, had already placed his sword beside Dorothea (ch. XXIX of Part One).
Relationships
- Don Quixote: the gentleman who seeks him out to weep his misfortune with him (ch. XXIV of Part One), whom Cardenio strikes with a stone for defending Madásima (ch. XXIV of Part One), and whose departure in the cage he helps prepare (ch. XLVII of Part One).
- Dorothea: the girl he takes for Luscinda at first sight (ch. XXVIII of Part One), to whom he swears not to abandon her (ch. XXIX of Part One), and whose story is the mirror of his own (ch. XXXVI of Part One).
- The Priest and the Barber: those who find him in full possession of his wits and hear the whole story (ch. XXVII of Part One), and with whom he sets up the fiction of Micomicona (ch. XXIX of Part One).
- Sancho Panza: the squire whom he knocks down with a punch (ch. XXIV of Part One) and whom he describes to the priest and the barber as the madman of the sierra (ch. XXVII of Part One).
- Marcela: the inverse figure, who chooses solitude by will rather than the sierra by misfortune (ch. XIV of Part One).