Who They Are
The Duke and Duchess are the couple of great lords who receive Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Part Two and host them for more than twenty chapters at their pleasure house, which the gentleman takes for a castle (chapter XXX of Part Two, chapter XXXI of Part Two). They have no names; the book calls them the duke and the duchess, and their mark is having read Part One, so that they know what to expect from the gentleman and from Sancho, and they stage, one by one, the adventures that the books taught them to admire. They want to amuse themselves; they fear that the guest will be embarrassed and the diversion will end, and so they hide their laughter (chapter XXXI of Part Two); they know about chivalry, about staging, and about each man's humor; and they are mistaken, says Cide Hamete, in thinking they are mocking two fools without resembling them (chapter LXX of Part Two). The wife is the one who asks the most questions and devises the most; the husband is the one who gives the orders and seals the promises. They turn the castle into a theater: Merlin, the Afflicted Duenna, Clavileño, the insula Barataria, the resurrection of Altisidora, the duel with the footman Tosilos. It is the first time Don Quixote's fiction has come to him from outside, from readers who stage it for him.
Trajectory
In chapter XXX of Part Two, after losing time and money on the enchanted boat, the gentleman sees in the meadow a lady in green, on a very white palfrey, with a falcon on her left hand: it is the duchess. Sancho brings her the message, kneeling, with every courtesy, and she, who already knows a great deal about the gentleman, invites her master to make use of her and of the duke her husband in a pleasure house they have there. Then she asks the squire:
Decidme, hermano escudero: este vuestro señor, ¿no es uno de quien anda impresa una historia que se llama del ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, que tiene por señora de su alma a una tal Dulcinea del Toboso?, Tell me, brother squire: is your lord not one of those about whom a history is in print, titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, who has as the lady of his soul one Dulcinea del Toboso?
The question changes the ground: Don Quixote stops being someone recognized by what he does and becomes someone recognized by what is in print. From what she says, she has been reading Part One, and that puts her, without warning, on the side of the reader who is about to stage the scene. Two readings: the curiosity of a reader who meets the character, or bait, by which she confirms what she needs to know in order to offer the right role. Sancho, to whom Sansón Carrasco had already said that the book is in print, receives the news that he is a character with the wit of a man who was switched in the cradle: the Sancho in the print may not be him. The narrator then clarifies the state of mind of the two:
por haber leído la primera parte desta historia y haber entendido por ella el disparatado humor de don Quijote, con grandísimo gusto y con deseo de conocerle le atendían, con prosupuesto de seguirle el humor y conceder con él en cuanto les dijese [...] tratándole como a caballero andante los días que con ellos se detuviese, con todas las ceremonias acostumbradas en los libros de caballerías, que ellos habían leído, y aun les eran muy aficionados, because they had read the first part of this history and had understood from it the absurd humor of Don Quixote, they awaited him with the greatest pleasure and desire to know him, with the intention of following his humor and agreeing with him in everything he said [...] treating him as a knight-errant for the days he stayed with them, with all the ceremonies customary in the books of chivalry, which they had read and were still very fond of.
On the dukes, the narrator goes no further than following their humor: hospitality that enters into the game of the host, or an arranged spectacle with the guest as its attraction, and the text limits itself to the means, the ceremonies of the books they love. The sentence announces what comes in the following chapters. In chapter XXXI of Part Two, the duke gets ahead and instructs the servants on how to treat the gentleman. At the door, two crimson silk footmen lift him in their arms, without his seeing or hearing them, and tell him to go and help the duchess down; the duchess will only dismount in the duke's arms, not considering herself worthy to lay such a useless burden on so great a knight. In the courtyard, two damsels put a scarlet cloak on the gentleman's shoulders, the corridors fill with servants who cry out, welcome the flower and cream of the knights-errant, and they all sprinkle scented waters over him:
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 on which he fully knew and believed himself to be a true knight-errant, and not a fantastic one, seeing himself treated in the same way that he had read such knights were treated in past centuries.
What he lacked at the inns, on the roads, and in the cages was to be treated as the books prescribe, and it is readers of the same books, who have already prepared themselves for the part, who give him that. The narrator's word is fantastic, and it opposes the true knight to the fantasy one. Two readings: the first full satisfaction the book gives him, or the first time his belief rests on others and no longer on himself.
In chapter XXXII of Part Two, at table, a clergyman of the castle belittles the gentleman, and the gentleman answers him before the dukes, who listen and admire him. In chapter XXXIII of Part Two, the duchess receives Sancho alone, has him sit on a low chair beside her, and tells him to sit as a governor and speak as a squire. She states the doubts the printed history left her, the first of which is how good Sancho dared to fake Dulcinea's reply. When Sancho confesses, she reverses the game without denying the confession:
porque real y verdaderamente yo sé de buena parte que la villana que dio el brinco sobre la pollina era y es Dulcinea del Toboso, y que el buen Sancho, pensando ser el engañador, es el engañado, because really and truly I know from a good source that the peasant girl who jumped onto the donkey was and is Dulcinea del Toboso, and that good Sancho, thinking himself the deceiver, is the one deceived.
The duchess does not say he lied; she says his lie was the work of enchanters and that the facts, indeed, were true. With that, the hoax that Sancho was directing passes into her hands, and the one who said I made it up hears that he was merely an instrument. Two readings: a trap set by those who want to amuse themselves at the squire's expense, or the extension of a belief the court decided to share with the guest, and in which Sancho may settle. In chapter XXXIV of Part Two, the dukes take the cave the gentleman described and turn it into a messenger. During a hunt, at nightfall, the forest seems to burn, and a postilion dressed as a devil announces:
Yo soy el Diablo; voy a buscar a don Quijote de la Mancha; la gente que por aquí viene son seis tropas de encantadores, que sobre un carro triunfante traen a la sin par Dulcinea del Toboso. Encantada viene con el gallardo francés Montesinos, a dar orden a don Quijote de cómo ha de ser desencantada la tal señora, I am the Devil; I am going to look for Don Quixote de la Mancha. The people coming this way are six troupes of enchanters, who on a triumphal cart bring the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. She comes enchanted, with the gallant Frenchman Montesinos, to give Don Quixote the orders for how that lady is to be disenchanted.
Montesinos, whom the gentleman said he saw beneath the earth, now appears with Dulcinea in a cart of enchanters, and the order about the disenchantment reaches the owner of the story. Don Quixote and Sancho are disturbed for opposite reasons: the squire because they want to enchant by force what he knows to be false, the gentleman because he can no longer state whether the cave was true. In chapter XXXV of Part Two, a cart of penitents with torches carries a figure who says he is Merlin, and pronounces the sentence:
es menester que Sancho, tu escudero, se dé tres mil azotes y trecientos en ambas sus valientes posaderas, al aire descubiertas, y de modo que le escuezan, le amarguen y le enfaden, it is necessary that Sancho, your squire, give himself three thousand lashes and three hundred on both of his brave buttocks, bared to the air, and in such a way that they sting him, sour him, and make him angry.
The remedy for the enchantment that Sancho invented is paid with Sancho's own hide, and the dukes' hoax makes use of what he confessed to the duchess two chapters earlier: the lie told in secret becomes the debt he must settle in public. Two readings: poetic justice for the cheat who pays for what he forged, or the cruelty of a game that charges a simple man, in lashes, for a lie he has already confessed to the very person now punishing him. The duke's steward, of burlesque and easygoing wit, is the author of Merlin, of the verses, and of the page who made Dulcinea (chapter XXXVI of Part Two). The Afflicted Duenna, the Countess Trifaldi, and the wooden horse Clavileño complete the set of the farce (chapter XXXVIII of Part Two, chapter XL of Part Two).
Before the flight, the duke reassures Sancho, who does not want to climb on:
la ínsula que yo os he prometido no es movible ni fugitiva: raíces tiene tan hondas, echadas en los abismos de la tierra, que no la arrancarán ni mudarán de donde está a tres tirones, the insula I promised you is neither movable nor fugitive: it has roots so deep, cast into the abysses of the earth, that they will not pull it up or move it from where it is with three tugs.
The duke treats the insula as a thing that does not flee from those who trust it, and soon tells Sancho what he really charges for it: he knows that every office of importance is won with some kind of bribe, and what he wants for this government is for the squire to go with his master and see the adventure through. The promise is bait, and it is the word of someone who means to keep it. Two readings: the insula is the rope that keeps Sancho on the wooden horse's croup, or it is the only serious thing in the game, and the duke affirms it before everyone to make the rest bearable.
In chapter XLII of Part Two, the dukes, pleased with the success of the adventure of the Afflicted Duenna, decide to carry the jokes further, because they have in Sancho such an accommodating man that he makes them pass for truth, and they send him to take possession of the insula. In chapter XLVII of Part Two, the duke sets up the hoax from the inside out and sends Sancho a warning letter:
Sé también, por espías verdaderas, que han entrado en ese lugar cuatro personas disfrazadas para quitaros la vida, porque se temen de vuestro ingenio; abrid el ojo, y mirad quién llega a hablaros, y no comáis de cosa que os presentaren, I also know, from true spies, that four persons in disguise have entered that place to take your life, because they fear your wit; open your eyes, and see who comes to speak to you, and do not eat anything they offer you.
A danger without a date for the insula, a danger without a face for the governor, and praise for the wit that makes him seem a threat. The warning ends where hunger begins, at do not eat what they offer you. The steward, who is a piece of the hoax, writes to the dukes that the governor pronounces sentences and gives warnings, and that in him discreet flashes and foolishness are mixed (chapter XLIX of Part Two, chapter LI of Part Two). In chapter L of Part Two, the duchess, pursuing her intention of making sport of herself and of receiving entertainment from Don Quixote, dispatches to the village the page who had made Dulcinea, with her husband's letter, another of her own, and a large coral necklace. In chapter LII of Part Two, the second Afflicted Duenna, Doña Rodríguez, asks the gentleman, dressed in mourning, to challenge the farmer who dishonored her daughter; the duke grants him leave and a safe field. When the challenge comes, in chapter LVI of Part Two, the duke instructs the footman Tosilos on how to win against the gentleman without wounding him, and orders the iron tips removed from the lances, arguing that Christendom does not permit such a risk to lives. The footman gives up because of the girl, and the duke's anger passes only when laughter takes its place. In chapter LVII of Part Two, the duchess hands Sancho his wife's letters, and Sancho, accused of theft by Altisidora, reminds the dukes that the opportunities for stealing were all in the government; the dukes had given him two hundred escudos of which the gentleman is still unaware.
In chapter LXIX of Part Two, the dukes hold Altisidora's funeral, with nearly a hundred torches, a tomb two varas high, and two crowned figures who look like real or feigned kings. In chapter LXX of Part Two, Cide Hamete gives his opinion of the hoax:
Y dice más Cide Hamete: que tiene para sí ser tan locos los burladores como los burlados, y que no estaban los duques dos dedos de parecer tontos, pues tanto ahínco ponían en burlarse de dos tontos, And Cide Hamete says more: that he holds the mockers to be as mad as the mocked, and that the dukes were not two fingers away from appearing foolish, since they put such effort into mocking two fools.
The narrator levels the hierarchy of the farce: what seemed a spectacle of nobles amusing themselves with two simpletons is, in his eyes, as demented as those mocked, because it spends torches, actors, and pomp on a diversion. Two readings: a moralist's rebuke of idlers who make a madman into a toy, or a way of protecting Don Quixote, from whom the text withdraws the air of sole victim, and of sparing Sancho the ridicule of the lashes.
Themes Embodied
The dukes are Appearance and Reality with an owner. What the gentleman sees out of illness and Sancho out of cleverness, they fabricate as a trade: Merlin's cart, the devil messenger, the wooden horse, the insula with its governor and doctor. The book shows the same structure of faith now installed by someone who knows it is a farce, and without any pretext of belief. The result is that the gentleman sees himself as a true knight for the first time (chapter XXXI of Part Two), and Sancho pays in lashes for a lie that was his own (chapter XXXV of Part Two).
In Language and Narration, the dukes are the readers of Part One who stage it. The duchess opens her conversation with Sancho by citing the book (chapter XXX of Part Two), holds him to the inconsistency of the history (chapter XXXIII of Part Two), and makes it pay off. The apocryphal Avellaneda is the counterpoint: after the castle, the gentleman hears the duplicate through a partition and changes course to refute it (chapter LIX of Part Two).
The theme of Justice and Law puts them at the center and in reverse: the insula is governed by a squire of make-believe, and it is the hoax that gives him the chance to be a true judge. When the duke instructs Tosilos to win without wounding and orders the iron tips removed from the lances, he gives the duel free rein in the name of Christendom, although the duel goes against the decree of the Holy Council, which forbids challenges (chapter LVI of Part Two).
Divergent Readings
The book itself presents two readings of what the dukes are, and neither is refuted. For Cide Hamete, the mockers are as mad as the mocked, and the dukes were not two fingers away from appearing foolish (chapter LXX of Part Two). For the squire, the government is the occasion to show himself better than the hoaxers expected (chapter XLIX of Part Two), and for the gentleman, it is the most generous hospitality the book gives him (chapter XXXI of Part Two).
Readings diverge on whether the hoax is cruelty. Whoever reads it through pain sees a game that charges two simple men the price of a court's laughter: the gentleman scratched (chapter XLVIII of Part Two), Sancho trampled between two escudos (chapter LIII of Part Two), Altisidora revived at the cost of twenty-four slaps and pinpricks (chapter LXIX of Part Two). Whoever reads it through its wit sees a theater that honors the gentleman as he always wanted to be honored, with torches, cloaks, and the title flower and cream of knights-errant, and that gives Sancho the insula he demanded (chapter XXXI of Part Two, chapter XLV of Part Two). Against the first reading, it is worth remembering that the gentleman leaves the castle of his own will, asking leave (chapter LVII of Part Two); against the second, that the narrator, in judging the hoax, calls it a madness equal to that of those mocked (chapter LXX of Part Two).
Relationships
- Don Quixote: the guest they treat as the books prescribe (chapter XXXI of Part Two) and for whom they arrange the adventures of the Afflicted Duenna and of Clavileño (chapter XXXVIII of Part Two, chapter XLI of Part Two).
- Sancho Panza: the squire whom the duchess has sit as a governor and to whom the duke promises the insula (chapter XXXIII of Part Two, chapter XLI of Part Two).
- Dulcinea del Toboso: the figure they turn into a character in a farce, on Merlin's cart (chapter XXXV of Part Two).
- Altisidora: the maid of the house who besieges the gentleman by commission (chapter XLIV of Part Two) and is revived in the funeral farce (chapter LXIX of Part Two).
- Teresa Panza: the wife of Sancho, to whom the duchess writes and sends a coral necklace (chapter L of Part Two).
- Cide Hamete Benengeli: the historian who judges the dukes as mad as those they mock (chapter LXX of Part Two).