Who He Is
Alonso Quijano is the gentleman of a village in La Mancha whose name the narrator does not wish to recall: he is about fifty, lean, an early riser, and fond of hunting, and lives with a housekeeper over forty, a niece under twenty-one, and a lad who saddles the nag as readily as he wields the pruning hook (Chapter I of Part One). Not even the surname is certain (Quijada, Quesada, perhaps Quejana), and the narrator says this matters little, so long as the narration does not stray from the truth. What defines him is reading: from reading the books of chivalry so much, he takes everything he read for truth, patches up armor with what he finds at home, gives himself the name Don Quixote de la Mancha, his nag the name Rocinante, and a farm girl the name of Dulcinea del Toboso, and sets out to right wrongs. The 1605 book takes him from home twice and returns him to the village caged on an oxcart (Chapter LII of Part One); the 1615 book takes him on a third sally and returns him to die in bed, with his wits restored and the name Alonso Quijano the Good (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two). The trait that links him from end to end is double: he reads the world as a book he already knows, and, outside what touches chivalry, he speaks with a discernment that makes his listeners doubt what they have just seen (Chapter XVIII of Part Two, Chapter XLIII of Part Two).
Trajectory
In Chapter I of Part One the gentleman is introduced only through objects and food: a lance in the rack, an old shield, a lean nag, a greyhound for coursing, a stew of more beef than mutton. It is from this inventory of little money and much free time that the man comes who will want to be someone else:
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor, in a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to recall, there lived not long ago a gentleman of the kind with a lance in the rack, an ancient shield, a lean nag, and a greyhound for coursing.
The narrator explains the madness as an accident of the body, short sleep and a dry brain, and then shows what it does to the mind: everything he reads becomes fact.
En resolución, él se enfrascó tanto en su letura, que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en claro, y los días de turbio en turbio; y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el celebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio, in short, he became so absorbed in his reading that his nights passed in reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk; and so, from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up, so that he came to lose his wits.
The text sustains two readings: that of a sick man, and that of a reader who chose to believe because real life offered him little. The method already appears in the first armor. He tests the helmet once, sees that it comes apart in one blow, remakes it with iron bars inside and, the second time, does not test it:
y, por asegurarse deste peligro, la tornó a hacer de nuevo, poniéndole unas barras de hierro por de dentro, de tal manera que él quedó satisfecho de su fortaleza; y, sin querer hacer nueva experiencia della, la diputó y tuvo por celada finísima de encaje, and, to make sure of this danger, he made it again, putting some iron bars inside it, in such a way that he was satisfied with its strength; and, without wishing to make a new trial of it, he deemed and held it to be a most excellent helmet of fine fit.
The lady comes out of the same gesture. Aldonza Lorenzo, a farm girl who perhaps did not even know of the passion, gets a name that sounds like romance, like the horse and the gentleman himself, because what he wants is not the woman, it is the piece missing for the set to be complete:
Llamábase Aldonza Lorenzo, y a ésta le pareció ser bien darle título de señora de sus pensamientos; y, buscándole nombre que no desdijese mucho del suyo, y que tirase y se encaminase al de princesa y gran señora, vino a llamarla Dulcinea del Toboso, porque era natural del Toboso, she was called Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed right to him to give her the title of lady of his thoughts; and, seeking a name for her that would not stray far from his own, and that would tend and incline toward that of a princess and great lady, he came to call her Dulcinea del Toboso, because she was a native of El Toboso.
In Chapter II of Part One he sets out on a hot July morning, before daybreak, through a false door of the yard, telling no one. In the afternoon he sees the inn through a list of parts that the books gave him, towers, bridge, moat, and the swineherd who blows his horn to gather the pigs becomes the dwarf who announces the knight:
como a nuestro aventurero todo cuanto pensaba, veía o imaginaba le parecía ser hecho y pasar al modo de lo que había leído, luego que vio la venta, se le representó que era un castillo con sus cuatro torres y chapiteles de luciente plata, sin faltarle su puente levadiza y honda cava, con todos aquellos adherentes que semejantes castillos se pintan, since to our adventurer everything he thought, saw, or imagined seemed to be made and to happen in the manner of what he had read, as soon as he saw the inn it presented itself to him as a castle with its four towers and pinnacles of shining silver, lacking neither its drawbridge nor its deep moat, with all those appurtenances that such castles are depicted with.
In Chapter III of Part One he kneels before the innkeeper and asks the boon of being dubbed a knight. The innkeeper, who already takes him for mad, pretends to pray by reading his account book and gives him the investiture to be rid of him. The gentleman does not notice that no one is reading anything: the form is fulfilled, and for him form is what counts. This same chapter shows the double regime in which he lives, the knight he believes himself to be and the madman others believe they see, and it is the second that protects him from the effects of the first:
El ventero daba voces que le dejasen, porque ya les había dicho como era loco, y que por loco se libraría, aunque los matase a todos, the innkeeper cried out that they should leave him alone, because he had already told them he was mad, and that being mad he would go free, even if he killed them all.
In Chapter IV of Part One he makes his first intervention as a knight, against the farmer who whips the boy Andrés. He does not investigate: he orders the master to pay and, when Andrés points out that the man is not a knight and has reason to fear being left alone with him, answers with the maxim the book will repeat in his favor:
Importa eso poco -respondió don Quijote-, que Haldudos puede haber caballeros; cuanto más, que cada uno es hijo de sus obras, that matters little, answered don Quixote, for there may be knights named Haldudo; all the more since each is the son of his works.
The farmer keeps the promise in form and undoes it in practice: as soon as the knight is gone, Andrés is beaten more. In Chapter XXXI of Part One, the boy reappears and gives the gentleman the news of what the rescue cost:
Por amor de Dios, señor caballero andante, que si otra vez me encontrare, aunque vea que me hacen pedazos, no me socorra ni ayude, sino déjeme con mi desgracia; que no será tanta, que no sea mayor la que me vendrá de su ayuda de vuestra merced, a quien Dios maldiga, y a todos cuantos caballeros andantes han nacido en el mundo, for the love of God, sir knight-errant, if you meet me another time, though you see them cutting me to pieces, do not rescue or help me, but leave me with my misfortune; for it will not be so great that the one that will come to me from your worship's help will not be greater, and may God curse you and all the knights-errant that have been born in the world.
In Chapter V of Part One, battered on the road, he has no words for the pain and recites the ballad of Valdovinos, left wounded on the mountain, and of the Marquis of Mantua. When his neighbor Pedro Alonso tells him that he is not Valdovinos nor Abindarráez, but the honored gentleman Quijana, he answers:
Yo sé quién soy -respondió don Quijote-; y sé que puedo ser no sólo los que he dicho, sino todos los Doce Pares de Francia, y aun todos los Nueve de la Fama, I know who I am, answered don Quixote; and I know that I can be not only those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France, and even all the Nine Worthies.
The sentence has two readings: that of one who has lost his footing and inflates what he is, and that of one who has decided who he will be and treats the identity others offer him as one among the possible. Between Chapter VI of Part One and Chapter VII of Part One, while he sleeps and recovers, the priest and the barber examine the library, condemn almost everything to the bonfire, and wall up the room. On rising, he receives the explanation that the priest and the barber ordered given and that the niece embellished, an enchanter who came on a cloud, and adopts and fattens it: he corrects the wizard's name to Frestón and gives the disappearance a cause that comes from outside and above:
ése es un sabio encantador, grande enemigo mío, que me tiene ojeriza, porque sabe por sus artes y letras que tengo de venir, andando los tiempos, a pelear en singular batalla con un caballero a quien él favorece, y le tengo de vencer, sin que él lo pueda estorbar, y por esto procura hacerme todos los sinsabores que puede, that is a wise enchanter, a great enemy of mine, who bears me a grudge, because he knows by his arts and letters that I am to come, in the course of time, to fight in single battle with a knight whom he favors, and I am to defeat him, without his being able to prevent it, and for this reason he tries to cause me all the vexations he can.
The loss of the books ceases to be a loss and becomes proof that the destiny he read exists. It is also in Chapter VII of Part One that he invites Sancho Panza and promises him an insula:
Has de saber, amigo Sancho Panza, que fue costumbre muy usada de los caballeros andantes antiguos hacer gobernadores a sus escuderos de las ínsulas o reinos que ganaban, y yo tengo determinado de que por mí no falte tan agradecida usanza; antes, pienso aventajarme en ella: porque ellos algunas veces, y quizá las más, esperaban a que sus escuderos fuesen viejos; y, ya después de hartos de servir y de llevar malos días y peores noches, les daban algún título de conde, o, por lo mucho, de marqués, de algún valle o provincia de poco más a menos; pero, si tú vives y yo vivo, bien podría ser que antes de seis días ganase yo tal reino que tuviese otros a él adherentes, que viniesen de molde para coronarte por rey de uno dellos, you must know, friend Sancho Panza, that it was a custom much used by the ancient knights-errant to make their squires governors of the insulas or kingdoms they won, and I am determined that through me so grateful a custom shall not fail; rather, I intend to surpass it: for they sometimes, and perhaps most times, waited until their squires were old; and then, when they were sated with serving and with bearing bad days and worse nights, they gave them some title of count, or at most of marquis, of some valley or province of more or less importance; but, if you live and I live, it might well be that before six days I should win such a kingdom that others would be attached to it, which would come just right to crown you king of one of them.
In Chapter VIII of Part One he sees thirty or forty windmills and takes them for giants, with an additional reason: to remove from the earth so evil a seed is a great service to God, and the spoils will begin to enrich them both. The windmills are the scene that the reader's memory keeps, and the text gives it in two speeches:
ves allí, amigo Sancho Panza, donde se descubren treinta, o pocos más, desaforados gigantes, con quien pienso hacer batalla y quitarles a todos las vidas, do you see over there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or so outrageous giants appear, with whom I intend to do battle and take the lives of all of them.
Sancho responds with the parts of what he sees, sails, wind, millstone. Don Quixote does not dispute the facts: he says that the squire is not versed in adventures and, after the fall, reuses the wizard of the previous chapter, so that the contradiction becomes the work of the enemy and proof that the knight was worth enough to be feared:
aquel sabio Frestón que me robó el aposento y los libros ha vuelto estos gigantes en molinos por quitarme la gloria de su vencimiento: tal es la enemistad que me tiene, that wise Frestón who robbed me of my study and my books has turned these giants into windmills to deprive me of the glory of defeating them: such is the enmity he bears me.
In Chapter X of Part One, with his wounded ear, he speaks not of pain or dressing, but of a potion whose recipe he claims to have in memory and which would dispense with time and remedies. He does not deny the wound, he displaces it to a medicine from the books, and with this binds the squire to service:
cuando vieres que en alguna batalla me han partido por medio del cuerpo (como muchas veces suele acontecer), bonitamente la parte del cuerpo que hubiere caído en el suelo, y con mucha sotileza, antes que la sangre se yele, la pondrás sobre la otra mitad que quedare en la silla, advirtiendo de encajallo igualmente y al justo, when you see that in some battle they have cut me in two through the middle of the body (as often happens), you will daintily take the part of the body that has fallen to the ground, and with great subtlety, before the blood congeals, you will place it on the other half that remains in the saddle, taking care to fit it evenly and exactly.
In Chapter XI of Part One, among the goatherds, he looks at a handful of acorns and makes the eulogy of the golden age:
Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquéllos a quien los antiguos pusieron nombre de dorados, y no porque en ellos el oro, que en esta nuestra edad de hierro tanto se estima, se alcanzase en aquella venturosa sin fatiga alguna, sino porque entonces los que en ella vivían ignoraban estas dos palabras de tuyo y mío, happy age and happy centuries those to which the ancients gave the name of golden, and not because in them gold, which in this iron age of ours is so highly prized, was gained in that fortunate time without any toil, but because then those who lived in it were ignorant of these two words: thine and mine.
The eulogy of the community of goods comes from a gentleman who sold land to buy books, and the text leaves two readings: he says what he feels, or repeats a speech from a pastoral book. The same uncertainty accompanies Chapter XIV of Part One: after the speech in which Marcela asks only to be left in peace, he puts his hand on the hilt of his sword and forbids anyone to follow her. The case fits the office, there is a damsel whom men pursue and he has a sword; what chivalry presupposes is missing, a lady who asks for help.
In Chapter XV of Part One the rule of the office decides who gets beaten. Before the fight with the Galician muleteers, he classifies:
A lo que yo veo, amigo Sancho, éstos no son caballeros, sino gente soez y de baja ralea, as far as I can see, friend Sancho, these are not knights, but base and low-born people.
After the beating, he reclassifies. The wound is no affront, he says, because the muleteers' weapons were stakes and none had a rapier, sword, or dagger, and the law of the duel is express:
no afrentan las heridas que se dan con los instrumentos que acaso se hallan en las manos; y esto está en la ley del duelo, escrito por palabras expresas: que si el zapatero da a otro con la horma que tiene en la mano, puesto que verdaderamente es de palo, no por eso se dirá que queda apaleado aquel a quien dio con ella, wounds given with instruments that happen to be found in one's hands are no affront; and this is in the law of the duel, written in express words: that if the cobbler strikes another with the last he has in his hand, though it is truly of wood, it will not for that be said that the one he struck with it is left cudgeled.
The rule adjusts itself to the case after the case and saves honor without contradicting the battered body. In Chapters XVI of Part One and XVII of Part One, at the inn, he composes the whole plot before the girl appears, the enamored daughter, the secret meeting, and the danger that most occupies him is failing Dulcinea. The jealous muleteer's punch becomes the hand of a giant, and the beating has an author:
Por donde conjeturo que el tesoro de la fermosura desta doncella le debe de guardar algún encantado moro, y no debe de ser para mí, whence I conjecture that the treasure of this damsel's beauty must be guarded by some enchanted Moor, and must not be for me.
On leaving, he accepts the contradiction without renouncing what he believed. He thought it was a castle, and not one of the worst, and to pay he has a rule at hand, that knights-errant never pay for lodging:
Engañado he vivido hasta aquí -respondió don Quijote-, que en verdad que pensé que era castillo, y no malo, I have lived deceived until now, answered don Quixote, for in truth I thought it was a castle, and not a bad one.
In Chapter XVIII of Part One two clouds of dust become two armies. The narrator does not say he invents out of nothing: he says he carries his fancy full, at every hour, of battles, enchantments, and challenges, and that everything he says, thinks, or does is directed to similar things.
viendo en su imaginación lo que no veía ni había, seeing in his imagination what he did not see and what was not there.
Sancho and his master hear the same sound and name it in two ways, and the text confirms the squire: they were flocks. Don Quixote does not deny the noise, he denies the listener: fear disturbs the senses, a rule he applies to Sancho and not to himself. At the end of the chapter, when Sancho thinks of leaving, he answers with a maxim that serves both him and the squire:
Sábete, Sancho, que no es un hombre más que otro si no hace más que otro, know, Sancho, that one man is no more than another unless he does more than another.
In the following chapters the book gives him the name and the device. In Chapter XIX of Part One, Sancho calls him Sorrowful Countenance for the face the torch showed, and the master replaces the cause with that of the wise chronicler who wants to give him an epithet like the ancients:
diráles vuestra merced que es el famoso don Quijote de la Mancha, que por otro nombre se llama el Caballero de la Triste Figura, your worship will tell them that he is the famous don Quixote de la Mancha, who by another name is called the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.
In Chapter XX of Part One, in the dark of the fulling mills, he turns Sancho's reason for flight into a reason for courage:
yo nací, por querer del cielo, en esta nuestra edad de hierro, para resucitar en ella la de oro, o la dorada, como suele llamarse. Yo soy aquél para quien están guardados los peligros, las grandes hazañas, los valerosos hechos, I was born, by the will of heaven, in this iron age of ours, to resurrect in it the golden one, or the age of gold, as it is usually called. I am he for whom dangers, great exploits, valorous deeds are reserved.
In Chapter XXI of Part One he sees a knight with a golden helmet, when Sancho sees a man on a dun donkey with something shining. The narrator explains the mechanism without calling it invention:
todas las cosas que veía, con mucha facilidad las acomodaba a sus desvariadas caballerías y malandantes pensamientos, everything he saw he very easily accommodated to his deranged chivalries and ill-starred thoughts.
That is why the change in the object's name, helmet, headpiece, morion, does not trouble him, and the barber's basin that Sancho hands him becomes the remainder of Mambrino's helmet. It may be a coherent system of madness, and it may be a will that the oath be fulfilled. In Chapter XXII of Part One he hears the cause of each galley slave, gathers everything into one, that justice failed each of them, and from there draws the duty to act: first he asks the guards, out of prudence, and the lance comes afterward. Among those freed is Ginés de Pasamonte:
no es bien que los hombres honrados sean verdugos de los otros hombres, no yéndoles nada en ello, it is not good that honorable men be executioners of other men, when it is no concern of theirs.
Those freed stone him and take his clothes, and the rule he sustains in Chapter XXX of Part One says why the account does not move him: the knight sees the penalty and does not ask about the guilt, because to ask would already be to judge.
a los caballeros andantes no les toca ni atañe averiguar si los afligidos, encadenados y opresos que encuentran por los caminos van de aquella manera, o están en aquella angustia, por sus culpas o por sus gracias; sólo le toca ayudarles como a menesterosos, poniendo los ojos en sus penas y no en sus bellaquerías, it neither touches nor concerns knights-errant to ascertain whether the afflicted, chained, and oppressed whom they meet on the roads go that way, or are in that anguish, for their faults or for their graces; it only falls to them to help them as needy, setting their eyes on their sufferings and not on their knaveries.
In the Sierra Morena, in Chapter XXV of Part One, madness becomes method. He chooses Amadis as the original to copy, in the sense in which a painter copies the master:
Amadís fue el norte, el lucero, el sol de los valientes y enamorados caballeros, a quien debemos de imitar todos aquellos que debajo de la bandera de amor y de la caballería militamos, Amadis was the north, the star, the sun of valiant and enamored knights, whom all of us who serve under the banner of love and chivalry ought to imitate.
And he decides to go mad without cause, because the merit lies in raving without occasion and showing the lady what he would do for her:
que volverse loco un caballero andante con causa, ni grado ni gracias: el toque está desatinar sin ocasión y dar a entender a mi dama que si en seco hago esto, ¿qué hiciera en mojado?, for a knight-errant to go mad with cause earns neither merit nor thanks: the point is to rave without occasion and let my lady understand that if I do this dry, what would I not do wet?
When Sancho puts side by side the farm girl he knows and the lady to whom his master sends the vanquished, he confirms it without being disturbed, and says that the Amaryllises and Galateas of the books were almost never ladies of flesh and blood. He knows, therefore, that the lady is his own work:
Así que, Sancho, por lo que yo quiero a Dulcinea del Toboso, tanto vale como la más alta princesa de la tierra [...] píntola en mi imaginación como la deseo, así en la belleza como en la principalidad, so, Sancho, for what I love Dulcinea del Toboso, she is worth as much as the highest princess on earth [...] I paint her in my imagination as I desire her, both in beauty and in rank.
The text leaves open whether this makes him less mad or more. In Chapter XXVI of Part One he rejects Orlando's madness out of respect for Dulcinea, because to suppose her unfaithful would be to wrong her, and keeps Amadis's, who weeps without losing his wits:
Pero yo, ¿cómo puedo imitalle en las locuras, si no le imito en la ocasión dellas? [...] y haríale agravio manifiesto si, imaginando otra cosa della, me volviese loco de aquel género de locura de Roldán el furioso, but I, how can I imitate him in his madnesses if I do not imitate him in their occasion? [...] and I would do her manifest wrong if, imagining otherwise of her, I were to go mad with that kind of madness of Orlando the Furious.
The fiction he built imposes on him loyalty to the lady he himself imagined. In Chapter XXX of Part One, when Sancho compares Princess Micomicona to Dulcinea, the offense strikes him in the deepest place:
Ella pelea en mí, y vence en mí, y yo vivo y respiro en ella, y tengo vida y ser, she fights in me, and conquers in me, and I live and breathe in her, and have life and being.
In Chapter XXXI of Part One Sancho invents the visit he never made, and the gentleman turns each contradiction into praise. Faced with the three-day journey, impossible for one who went and returned, he props up the squire with a wizard friend:
aquel sabio nigromante que tiene cuenta con mis cosas y es mi amigo [...] algún sabio amigo te debió de llevar en volandillas, sin que tú lo sintieses, that wise necromancer who looks after my affairs and is my friend [...] some wise friend must have carried you off flying, without your feeling it.
Each protects, in his own way, the same fiction. In Chapter XXXVIII of Part One, at the inn table, he discourses on the soldier's poverty with method and weighs labor against reward; what worries him is not dying, it is dying unseen:
Y así, considerando esto, estoy por decir que en el alma me pesa de haber tomado este ejercicio de caballero andante en edad tan detestable como es esta en que ahora vivimos; porque, aunque a mí ningún peligro me pone miedo, todavía me pone recelo pensar si la pólvora y el estaño me han de quitar la ocasión de hacerme famoso y conocido por el valor de mi brazo y filos de mi espada, and so, considering this, I am inclined to say that it grieves me in my soul to have taken up this exercise of knight-errant in an age so detestable as this in which we now live; because, although no danger frightens me, still it gives me misgiving to think whether powder and tin are to take from me the chance of making myself famous and known for the valor of my arm and the edge of my sword.
While he speaks, none of his listeners takes him for mad (Chapter XXXVII of Part One). In Chapter XLVI of Part One, imprisoned in the cart by the prophecy the barber composed in the style of the books, he accepts the cage as enchantment and turns it into the wait for a reward:
ruégote que pidas de mi parte al sabio encantador que mis cosas tiene a cargo, que no me deje perecer en esta prisión donde agora me llevan, hasta ver cumplidas tan alegres e incomparables promesas como son las que aquí se me han hecho, I beg you to ask on my behalf the wise enchanter who has my affairs in his charge not to let me perish in this prison where they are now taking me, until I see fulfilled such joyful and incomparable promises as those that have been made me here.
The explanation that he is enchanted covers the fact of not knowing who imprisoned him. In Chapter XLIX of Part One, when Sancho proves by the body and its needs that he is not enchanted, the answer answers another question, that of what he must do:
Yo sé y tengo para mí que voy encantado, y esto me basta para la seguridad de mi conciencia; que la formaría muy grande si yo pensase que no estaba encantado y me dejase estar en esta jaula, perezoso y cobarde, defraudando el socorro que podría dar a muchos menesterosos y necesitados que de mi ayuda y amparo deben tener a la hora de ahora precisa y estrema necesidad, I know and hold for myself that I go enchanted, and this is enough for the security of my conscience; for I would form a very great one if I thought that I was not enchanted and let myself stay in this cage, lazy and cowardly, defrauding the succor I could give to many needy and destitute who must at this very hour have precise and extreme need of my help and protection.
If he is enchanted, he cannot succor anyone and the cage does not accuse him; if he is not, the cage would make him a coward. The hypothesis of being sane is the one that would oblige him to leave, and it is the one he does not choose. It may be faith in the doctrine, and it may be the way out that lets him stay still without remorse. In the same chapter he defends Floripes and Fierabrás to the canon of Toledo:
¿qué ingenio puede haber en el mundo que pueda persuadir a otro que no fue verdad lo de la infanta Floripes y Guy de Borgoña, y lo de Fierabrás con la puente de Mantible, que sucedió en el tiempo de Carlomagno; que voto a tal que es tanta verdad como es ahora de día, what wit can there be in the world that could persuade another that it was not true about the infanta Floripes and Guy of Burgundy, and about Fierabrás with the bridge of Mantible, which happened in the time of Charlemagne; for I swear it is as true as it is day now?
He does not accept degrees of truth, only the alternative between everything true and everything lie: if Floripes is a lie, there was no Hector nor Trojan War either. In Chapter L of Part One he presents himself as proof of reading:
De mí sé decir que, después que soy caballero andante, soy valiente, comedido, liberal, bien criado, generoso, cortés, atrevido, blando, paciente, sufridor de trabajos, de prisiones, de encantos, of myself I can say that, since I became a knight-errant, I am valiant, courteous, liberal, well-bred, generous, polite, bold, gentle, patient, enduring of toils, of imprisonments, of enchantments.
The canon may read this as proof that reading made him better, or that it made him a prisoner, and the text leaves both things side by side. In Chapter LII of Part One he mistakes a wooden Virgin, in mourning, for a captive, attacks the procession, and is knocked down. Sancho weeps over him and unwittingly draws the portrait the book gave:
¡Oh flor de la caballería, que con solo un garrotazo acabaste la carrera de tus tan bien gastados años [...] enamorado sin causa, imitador de los buenos, azote de los malos, enemigo de los ruines, en fin, caballero andante, que es todo lo que decir se puede, O flower of chivalry, who with a single blow of a cudgel ended the career of your so well-spent years [...] enamored without cause, imitator of the good, scourge of the bad, enemy of the base, in sum, knight-errant, which is all that can be said!
The 1605 book closes with the public return, at noon on a Sunday, the opposite of the first hidden sally, and with the promise of a third.
In Part Two the book already exists inside the book. In Chapter I of Part Two the priest and the barber test the cure and see it belied in minutes, when the gentleman proposes that the king summon the knights-errant of Spain against the Turk. Seen from inside, it is not delirium, it is common practice in any book of chivalry, and he knows he is being assessed and does not hide it. Painting Amadis as a serene man who speaks little and forgives quickly, the opposite of the bloodshot-eyed knight he usually is, he says:
estoy por decir que con mis propios ojos vi a Amadís de Gaula, que era un hombre alto de cuerpo, blanco de rostro, bien puesto de barba, aunque negra, de vista entre blanda y rigurosa, corto de razones, tardo en airarse y presto en deponer la ira, I am inclined to say that with my own eyes I saw Amadis of Gaul, who was a man tall of body, fair of face, with a well-set beard, though black, of look between gentle and severe, short of speech, slow to anger and quick to lay aside wrath.
Two readings: complete madness, or the faith of one who treats books as witnesses and deduces faces as the reader deduces characters. In Chapter III of Part Two, on learning from the bachelor Sansón Carrasco that Part One circulates in print, the demand he makes of the book is truth:
no fuera escribir verdades, sino mentiras; y los historiadores que de mentiras se valen habían de ser quemados, como los que hacen moneda falsa, it would not be writing truths but lies; and historians who avail themselves of lies ought to be burned, like those who make false coin.
For him history is a sacred thing, and the irony is in plain view of the reader: whoever demands total truth is he who takes windmills for giants. Two readings: he judges the author with the ruler he applies to himself, or the ruler is the only one that lets him not doubt what he tells. In Chapter VI of Part Two, faced with the niece's objection that he is poor, he changes the criterion from blood to conduct:
solos aquéllos parecen grandes y ilustres que lo muestran en la virtud, y en la riqueza y liberalidad de sus dueños, only those seem great and illustrious who show it in virtue, and in the wealth and liberality of their lords.
In Chapter IX of Part Two, searching at night for Dulcinea's palace in El Toboso, he tells Sancho that in all the days of his life he has never seen her, which Part One told otherwise (in twelve years of love, he had not seen her four times, Chapter XXV of Part One):
¿no te he dicho mil veces que en todos los días de mi vida no he visto a la sin par Dulcinea, ni jamás atravesé los umbrales de su palacio, y que sólo estoy enamorado de oídas y de la gran fama que tiene de hermosa y discreta?, have I not told you a thousand times that in all the days of my life I have not seen the peerless Dulcinea, nor ever crossed the threshold of her palace, and that I am in love only by hearsay and from the great fame she has of being beautiful and discreet?
Don Quixote sees no contradiction in searching for the address of the idea, and the idea is enough for him. In Chapter X of Part Two, when Sancho places a peasant woman before him as if she were the lady, he chooses between two hypotheses, Sancho lied or an enchanter changed what he sees, and goes with the second, which he extends to himself:
ya que el maligno encantador me persigue, y ha puesto nubes y cataratas en mis ojos, y para sólo ellos y no para otros ha mudado y transformado tu sin igual hermosura y rostro en el de una labradora pobre, si ya también el mío no le ha cambiado en el de algún vestiglo, para hacerle aborrecible a tus ojos, since the malicious enchanter persecutes me, and has put clouds and cataracts in my eyes, and for them alone and not for others has changed and transformed your matchless beauty and face into that of a poor peasant woman, unless my own too has been changed into that of some monster, to make it hateful to your eyes.
The hypothesis prevents the lady from being a village woman and protects the cause. The smell of raw garlic is the only datum of the senses that he registers against the illusion, and he undoes it at once: enchantment took the good scent from the lady. Two readings: faith that costs him his own sight, or the lucid choice of one who knows that without Dulcinea there is no reason for the quest. In Chapter XI of Part Two, before the cart of the Parliament of Death, he shows the other side of the method:
así como vi este carro, imaginé que alguna grande aventura se me ofrecía; y ahora digo que es menester tocar las apariencias con la mano para dar lugar al desengaño, as soon as I saw this cart, I imagined that some great adventure was offering itself to me; and now I say that one must touch appearances with the hand to make room for disillusionment.
The Don Quixote of Part Two knows how to distinguish what sight gives from what verification confirms, at least where appearance does not touch the lady. In Chapter XIV of Part Two he defeats the Knight of the Mirrors and imposes on the vanquished a clause of reciprocity, which turns the enchanters' explanation into a rule of courtesy:
También habéis de confesar y creer -añadió don Quijote- que aquel caballero que vencistes no fue ni pudo ser don Quijote de la Mancha, sino otro que se le parecía, como yo confieso y creo que vos, aunque parecéis el bachiller Sansón Carrasco, no lo sois, sino otro que le parece, y que en su figura aquí me le han puesto mis enemigos, para que detenga y temple el ímpetu de mi cólera, y para que use blandamente de la gloria del vencimiento, you must also confess and believe, added don Quixote, that the knight you defeated was not and could not be don Quixote de la Mancha, but another who resembled him, as I confess and believe that you, though you seem the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, are not he, but another who resembles him, and that in his figure my enemies have placed him here before me, so that I may restrain and temper the impetus of my wrath, and use gently the glory of victory.
In Chapter XVII of Part Two, ordering the lions' cage opened, he defines courage as the mean and places himself, deliberately, on the side of excess:
bien sé lo que es valentía, que es una virtud que está puesta entre dos estremos viciosos, como son la cobardía y la temeridad; pero menos mal será que el que es valiente toque y suba al punto de temerario, que no que baje y toque en el punto de cobarde, I know well what valor is, a virtue situated between two vicious extremes, which are cowardice and rashness; but it will be a lesser evil for the valiant man to touch and rise to the point of rashness than to fall and touch the point of cowardice.
The lion yawns, washes its face with its tongue, and turns its back, and the gentleman takes this for victory. In Chapter XXII of Part Two he descends into Montesinos's cave, and in Chapter XXIII of Part Two he tells that he lived there three days, when for Sancho and the cousin it was an hour. Before narrating, he examines himself:
vi que no dormía, sino que realmente estaba despierto [...] me certificaron que yo era allí entonces el que soy aquí ahora, I saw that I was not asleep, but really awake [...] they assured me that I was there then the one I am here now.
The test proves only that he is awake while he examines himself, not that he was awake when sleep took him. The vision also rests on a lie of Sancho's that he does not know: the enchanted lady appears in the clothes the squire showed him at El Toboso. In Chapter XXVI of Part Two, wrecking Master Pedro's puppet show as if the puppets were Moors, he declares that enchanters only put the figures before him as they are and then change them; in Chapter XXIX of Part Two, in the enchanted boat, the same doctrine answers Sancho's objection that they are water mills:
todas las cosas trastruecan y mudan de su ser natural los encantos. No quiero decir que las mudan de en uno en otro ser realmente, sino que lo parece, como lo mostró la experiencia en la transformación de Dulcinea, único refugio de mis esperanzas, enchantments transmute and change all things from their natural being. I do not mean to say that they really change them from one being to another, but that it seems so, as experience showed in the transformation of Dulcinea, the sole refuge of my hopes.
In Part One he saw a giant and the squire said windmill. Here he grants Sancho the appearance and takes away its value, and the theory closes over the squire's lie and needs it to sustain itself. In Chapter XXXI of Part Two, in the castle of the Duke and Duchess, he receives the treatment the books prescribe:
aquél fue el primer día que de todo en todo conoció y creyó ser caballero andante verdadero, y no fantástico, viéndose tratar del mesmo modo que él había leído se trataban los tales caballeros en los pasados siglos, that was the first day he fully knew and believed himself to be a true knight-errant, and not a fantastic one, seeing himself treated in the same way he had read such knights were treated in past centuries.
For the first time the fiction comes to him from outside, from readers of the same books who have already prepared for the role. In Chapter XXXII of Part Two, after answering the ecclesiastic who treated him badly at table, he answers the duchess about Dulcinea without saying whether she exists:
Dios sabe si hay Dulcinea o no en el mundo, o si es fantástica o no es fantástica; y éstas no son de las cosas cuya averiguación se ha de llevar hasta el cabo. Ni yo engendré ni parí a mi señora, puesto que la contemplo como conviene que sea una dama que contenga en sí las partes que puedan hacerla famosa en todas las del mundo, God knows whether there is a Dulcinea or not in the world, or whether she is fantastic or not fantastic; and these are not among the things whose verification must be carried to the end. I neither begot nor bore my lady, though I contemplate her as befits a lady who contains in herself the parts that can make her famous in all parts of the world.
The sentence serves whoever bets on her existence and whoever bets on her invention. In Chapter XLI of Part Two, after the flight on Clavileño, he proposes to Sancho, in his ear, the pact of two men who ask each other to believe what they have not seen:
Sancho, pues vos queréis que se os crea lo que habéis visto en el cielo, yo quiero que vos me creáis a mí lo que vi en la cueva de Montesinos; y no os digo más, Sancho, since you want us to believe what you saw in the sky, I want you to believe me what I saw in the cave of Montesinos; and I say no more.
In Chapter XLII of Part Two he gives Sancho, who is about to govern the insula of Barataria, the most sensible counsels in the book, and gives them from what he himself lived, the poor gentleman who made himself a knight by will:
Mira, Sancho: si tomas por medio a la virtud, y te precias de hacer hechos virtuosos, no hay para qué tener envidia a los que los tienen de príncipes y señores, porque la sangre se hereda y la virtud se aquista, y la virtud vale por sí sola lo que la sangre no vale, look, Sancho: if you take virtue as your means, and take pride in doing virtuous deeds, there is no reason to envy those who have them from princes and lords, because blood is inherited and virtue is acquired, and virtue is worth by itself what blood is not worth.
The narrator observes in Chapter XLIII of Part Two that, in the second counsels, he placed discretion and madness at a high point. In Chapter LII of Part Two, so that a farmer may be able to fight over a duenna's grievance, he descends in rank:
desde aquí digo que por esta vez renuncio a mi hidalguía, y me allano y ajusto con la llaneza del dañador, y me hago igual con él, habilitándole para poder combatir conmigo; y así, aunque ausente, le desafío y repto, from here I say that for this time I renounce my gentility, and level and adjust myself to the plainness of the wrongdoer, and make myself equal to him, enabling him to fight with me; and so, though absent, I challenge and defy him.
The rule gives way when a real wrong calls for it and a lord offers the field. In Chapter LVIII of Part Two, after leaving the castle, he makes the eulogy of freedom, and the word that sustains it is obligation: the short bread of the road without a debt of favor is worth more than the abundant table that binds.
La libertad, Sancho, es uno de los más preciosos dones que a los hombres dieron los cielos; con ella no pueden igualarse los tesoros que encierra la tierra ni el mar encubre; por la libertad, así como por la honra, se puede y debe aventurar la vida, y, por el contrario, el cautiverio es el mayor mal que puede venir a los hombres, freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven gave to men; with it the treasures that the earth holds or the sea conceals cannot be compared; for freedom, as for honor, life can and must be ventured, and, on the contrary, captivity is the greatest evil that can come to men.
In Chapter LIX of Part Two, on hearing at an inn, through the partition, two guests reading the apocryphal book, and reacting to the accusation that he forgot Dulcinea, he changes the itinerary of the journey so that the world may see that the true Don Quixote decides for himself where he goes:
Quienquiera que dijere que don Quijote de la Mancha ha olvidado, ni puede olvidar, a Dulcinea del Toboso, yo le haré entender con armas iguales que va muy lejos de la verdad; porque la sin par Dulcinea del Toboso ni puede ser olvidada, ni en don Quijote puede caber olvido: su blasón es la firmeza, y su profesión, el guardarla con suavidad y sin hacerse fuerza alguna, whoever says that don Quixote de la Mancha has forgotten, or can forget, Dulcinea del Toboso, I shall make him understand with equal arms that he is very far from the truth; because the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso can neither be forgotten, nor can forgetfulness find room in don Quixote: his blazon is constancy, and his profession, to keep it with gentleness and without doing himself any violence.
In Chapter LXIV of Part Two, on the beach at Barcelona, the Knight of the White Moon unhorses him and demands that he retire to his village for a year. Fallen, without raising his visor, he confesses Dulcinea's beauty and places honor in his own fall:
Dulcinea del Toboso es la más hermosa mujer del mundo, y yo el más desdichado caballero de la tierra, y no es bien que mi flaqueza defraude esta verdad. Aprieta, caballero, la lanza, y quítame la vida, pues me has quitado la honra, Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I the most unfortunate knight on earth, and it is not right that my weakness should defraud this truth. Press your lance, knight, and take my life, since you have taken my honor.
In Chapter LXV of Part Two it is learned that the victor is Sansón Carrasco, who won in order to cure. In Chapter LXVI of Part Two he laments, in the same place, his misfortune; he soon corrects himself and acknowledges that he challenged with Rocinante's weakness against the other's powerful horse. In Chapter LXVII of Part Two he changes roles without changing fiction, and proposes to become a shepherd during the year of retirement:
querría, ¡oh Sancho!, que nos convirtiésemos en pastores, siquiera el tiempo que tengo de estar recogido. Yo compraré algunas ovejas, y todas las demás cosas que al pastoral ejercicio son necesarias, y llamándome yo el pastor Quijotiz, y tú el pastor Pancino [...] con que podremos hacernos eternos y famosos, no sólo en los presentes, sino en los venideros siglos, I would like, O Sancho, for us to turn shepherds, at least for the time I must be in retirement. I shall buy some sheep and all the other things necessary to the pastoral exercise, and I shall call myself the shepherd Quixotiz, and you the shepherd Pancino [...] with which we can make ourselves eternal and famous, not only in the present, but in future centuries.
In Chapter LXXII of Part Two, at the inn, before Don Álvaro Tarfe, a character from the apocryphal book, he resolves what the rival book took from him:
Yo -dijo don Quijote- no sé si soy bueno, pero sé decir que no soy el malo; para prueba de lo cual quiero que sepa vuesa merced, mi señor don Álvaro Tarfe, que en todos los días de mi vida no he estado en Zaragoza; antes, por haberme dicho que ese don Quijote fantástico se había hallado en las justas desa ciudad, no quise yo entrar en ella, por sacar a las barbas del mundo su mentira, I, said don Quixote, do not know whether I am good, but I can say that I am not the bad one; as proof of which I want your worship, my lord don Álvaro Tarfe, to know that in all the days of my life I have not been in Zaragoza; rather, because I was told that that fantastic don Quixote had been at the jousts of that city, I refused to enter it, in order to expose his lie to the beards of the world.
The modesty of the beginning is exhausted in the certainty of the end: he knows he is not the other. In Chapter LXXIV of Part Two, after sleeping more than six hours, he awakens and says he has his wits free and clear. The diagnosis comes from the patient himself, in terms of reading:
Yo tengo juicio ya, libre y claro, sin las sombras caliginosas de la ignorancia, que sobre él me pusieron mi amarga y continua leyenda de los detestables libros de las caballerías. Ya conozco sus disparates y sus embelecos, y no me pesa sino que este desengaño ha llegado tan tarde, que no me deja tiempo para hacer alguna recompensa, leyendo otros que sean luz del alma, I now have judgment, free and clear, without the murky shadows of ignorance that my bitter and continual reading of the detestable books of chivalry cast over it. I now know their nonsense and their deceptions, and I regret only that this disillusionment has come so late that it leaves me no time to make some amends by reading others that may be the light of the soul.
He laments the lateness of the disillusionment, and not the fact of having been deceived. He asks for the priest, Sansón, and the barber to confess and make his will, and announces the change of name, which is the center of the chapter:
Dadme albricias, buenos señores, de que ya yo no soy don Quijote de la Mancha, sino Alonso Quijano, a quien mis costumbres me dieron renombre de Bueno. Ya soy enemigo de Amadís de Gaula y de toda la infinita caterva de su linaje, give me joy, good sirs, for now I am no longer don Quixote de la Mancha, but Alonso Quijano, whom my ways gave the name of Good. Now I am an enemy of Amadis of Gaul and of all the infinite throng of his lineage.
The three believe a new madness has taken him, and he repeats that in such straits a man does not trifle with his soul. When Sancho, weeping, begs him not to die and to accept the year as a shepherd, he answers:
vámonos poco a poco, pues ya en los nidos de antaño no hay pájaros hogaño: yo fui loco, y ya soy cuerdo; fui don Quijote de la Mancha, y soy agora, como he dicho, Alonso Quijano el Bueno, let us go little by little, for in last year's nests there are no birds this year: I was mad, and now I am sane; I was don Quixote de la Mancha, and I am now, as I have said, Alonso Quijano the Good.
In the will, he leaves the estate to his niece Antonia Quijana, pays the housekeeper's wages, and asks Sancho's pardon for the error he led him into, and the clause about the niece says that she is not to marry a man who knows what books of chivalry are. The notary records that no knight of the books died in bed so peaceful and Christian, and the narrator adds that he gave up his spirit, that is, he died. Sansón writes the epitaph, and Cide Hamete closes the book by hanging up the pen and keeping the character for himself.
Themes Embodied
The gentleman is Madness put on stage as method and not as a continuous fog. Don Quixote's madness has a declared cause (reading, Chapter I of Part One), a rule of defense (the enchanter, Chapter VII of Part One), a deliberate choice (Beltenebros's penance, Chapter XXV of Part One), and an exit (disillusionment, Chapter LXXIV of Part Two). The book gives him lucidity on other subjects, poetry, arms, government, and for that reason the narrator himself says that his deeds discredit his judgment and his judgment his deeds (Chapter XLIII of Part Two). This double regime is what makes the madness a matter of Honor and Reputation: what he asks on dying is that fame not seal him as mad (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two).
What links him to Appearance and Reality is a grammar of explanation. Every contradiction, the blanket-tossing, the windmills, the basin, the lion that does not come out, the peasant woman of El Toboso, is gathered up by a single doctrine, the enchanters, and the doctrine is never exhausted because the contradiction becomes proof of the worth of the one contradicted (Chapter VIII of Part One, Chapter X of Part Two, Chapter XXIX of Part Two). In Part Two the doctrine changes owners: Sancho learns it to cover his own lie and the Duke and Duchess stage it as spectacle (Chapter XXXI of Part Two), and it is after the flight on Clavileño that the gentleman proposes to Sancho the pact the book asks of the reader, to believe the other without proof (Chapter XLI of Part Two).
Cervantes makes the chivalric romance a question of Language and Narration: the gentleman speaks the language of the books, demands of the chronicler the truth of history, and ends up translated into a printed book, read by the dukes and imitated by an apocryphal one (Chapter II of Part One, Chapter III of Part Two, Chapter LIX of Part Two). The defense he makes of himself at the end, before Don Álvaro Tarfe, is that of a character who knows himself read and answers the duplicate with the only weapon he has, not putting himself where the other put him (Chapter LXXII of Part Two).
The relation to Love and to Freedom and Oppression passes through Dulcinea. He loves her by hearsay, and fabricates in himself the love the office demands, to the point of refusing Orlando's madness so as not to suppose her unfaithful (Chapter XXVI of Part One, Chapter IX of Part Two). He defends the freedom of others by rule of office, Marcela's, the galley slaves', the lovers' at Camacho's wedding (Chapter XIV of Part One, Chapter XXII of Part One, Chapter XXI of Part Two), and his own when he says that freedom is one of the most precious gifts (Chapter LVIII of Part Two); in Chapter XLVII of Part One, however, he accepts the cage without resistance, because he reads it as enchantment.
Divergent Readings
The book itself puts in the mouths of those who observe him readings that do not contradict each other. Don Lorenzo, the poet son of Don Diego, sees in him a vein of madness running through a good intelligence, and for that reason he is neither cured nor discarded (Chapter XVIII of Part Two):
No le sacarán del borrador de su locura cuantos médicos y buenos escribanos tiene el mundo: él es un entreverado loco, lleno de lúcidos intervalos, they will not draw him out of the rough draft of his madness, however many doctors and good scribes the world has: he is a mixed-up madman, full of lucid intervals.
Don Antonio Moreno, on learning that the Knight of the White Moon is the bachelor, makes the opposite eulogy, that of not wanting to cure the most amusing madman in the world (Chapter LXV of Part Two):
Dios os perdone el agravio que habéis hecho a todo el mundo en querer volver cuerdo al más gracioso loco que hay en él! ¿No veis, señor, que no podrá llegar el provecho que cause la cordura de don Quijote a lo que llega el gusto que da con sus desvaríos, God forgive you the wrong you have done to the whole world in wanting to make sane the most amusing madman in it! Do you not see, sir, that the benefit that don Quixote's sanity can bring will never reach the pleasure he gives with his ravings?
For one reading, the book changes temperament as it advances, from the initial irony to a bitter ending, and the gentleman is an ancient, ambiguous consciousness bound to the sacred, defeated on the social plane by a rationalist order, but vindicated by a higher horizon.
Erich Auerbach, in Mimesis - Chap. 14 - The Enchanted Dulcinea, contests the reading that makes the gentleman a symbol of idealistic grandeur, born of Romanticism and maintained against philological criticism, and rejects the idea that his madness should be read tragically or symbolically:
Auerbach identifies the adversary: the reading that makes Don Quixote a symbol of idealistic grandeur is born with Romanticism and persists even against philologists who had already demonstrated that Cervantes did not have that intention.There must be few lovers of literary art who do not connect with Don Quixote the conception of idealistic grandeur [...] Especially after Romanticism, this idea became almost general, and it persists even against philological criticism, insofar as the latter seeks to show that Cervantes had no intention of arousing such an impression.
At the end of the essay, Auerbach extends to Don Quixote's entire madness the verdict he had given to the scene of the enchanted Dulcinea.But to consider this madness symbolically or tragically, that I find an act of violence. It is possible to introduce it through interpretation, but it is not in the text.
Otto Maria Carpeaux, in History of Western Literature - 5.6 - Anti-Baroque, reads the book as the novel of novels, because the contrast between appearances and reality is the very substance of the genre, and foresees that it will keep forever two classes of readers, children and those tried by life:
the contrast between appearances and reality is the very substance of the "novel" genre. In this sense Don Quixote is "the novel of novels."
Don Quixote will forever keep its two classes of readers: children, who do not yet know life, and the others, harshly tried by it.
The readings diverge on what the end of the book does to the rest. Whoever reads through the irony that turns sour sees in Alonso Quijano's disillusionment the scene in which laughter yields and the character renounces the life that gave him fame (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two). Whoever reads like Auerbach sees the final lucidity as Cervantes's deepest joke, which does not change register: the book itself changes the character's name, lays him in bed, and goes on playing with the will, the notary, and the hanging pen. Against the reading of the bitter ending, it is worth remembering that death comes accompanied by laughter, the notary who compares the gentleman to the knights of the books, the clause that forbids the niece to marry a reader of chivalry, the pen that discourses from its hook; against that of the book not changing register, that Alonso Quijano the Good is the only time the book changes the character's name, and the new name comes with congratulations asked of his friends (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two).
Relationships
- Sancho Panza: the poor neighbor to whom he promises an insula (Chapter VII of Part One), who follows him with the account in hand and the body battered (Chapter XV of Part One), who invents the visit to Dulcinea and the enchanted peasant woman (Chapter XXXI of Part One, Chapter X of Part Two), who haggles over wages and receives from him the governor's counsels (Chapter VII of Part Two, Chapter XLII of Part Two) and who weeps for him on his deathbed (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two).
- Dulcinea del Toboso: the lady he fabricates from a farm girl (Chapter I of Part One), defends with the lance (Chapter XXX of Part One), searches for at night in El Toboso (Chapter IX of Part Two), sees enchanted in a peasant woman (Chapter X of Part Two) and upholds when fallen, on the beach at Barcelona (Chapter LXIV of Part Two).
- The Priest and the Barber: they burn his books and wall up the room (Chapter VI of Part One), build the cage and the prophecy (Chapter XLVI of Part One), test his cure (Chapter I of Part Two), and the priest confesses him at death (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two).
- Sansón Carrasco: the bachelor who brings him the news of the printed book (Chapter III of Part Two), confronts him twice disguised as a knight, defeated in Chapter XIV of Part Two and victorious in Chapter LXIV of Part Two, and writes the epitaph (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two).
- Cide Hamete Benengeli: the historian whom the narrator pretends to follow, of whom the gentleman fears that, being a Moor, he may not tell the truth (Chapter III of Part Two), and who closes the book by keeping the character for himself (Chapter LXXIV of Part Two).
- The Duke and Duchess: the readers of Part One who receive him as a true knight and make him the guest of a long jest (Chapter XXXI of Part Two, Chapter XXXV of Part Two, Chapter LVII of Part Two).
- Ginés de Pasamonte: the galley slave whom he frees and who stones him (Chapter XXII of Part One), and who reappears as Master Pedro, the puppeteer whose puppet show he wrecks (Chapter XXVI of Part Two) and who is only revealed for who he is in Chapter XXVII of Part Two.
- Cardenio and Dorothea: the madman of the sierra with whom he trades blows over a queen from a book (Chapter XXIV of Part One) and Princess Micomicona who draws him from the penance (Chapter XXIX of Part One).
- Marcela: the shepherdess whom he defends without her asking (Chapter XIV of Part One).
- Altisidora: the dukes' maiden who besieges him as a jest and whom he reads as adoration, remaining faithful to Dulcinea (Chapter XLIV of Part Two, Chapter LXVII of Part Two).
- Teresa Panza: Sancho's wife, whose refusal of the "don" and whose question about who put Sancho in with Don Quixote measure the name he gave himself (Chapter V of Part Two).