What It Is
The cage of latticed sticks in which the priest and the barber, aided by Don Fernando and his companions, the servants of Don Luis, the constables, and the innkeeper, take Don Quixote back to the village in an oxcart at the end of Part One. Disguised and silent, they seize him at night, tie his hands and feet, and shut him in it, and a voice of prophecy, composed in the style of the books he read, tells him that he is enchanted and that he will leave married to Dulcinea. The cage is the scene in which those who love him make use of the language of his madness to take him home, and it is also the one in which Sancho Panza recognizes all the disguised men and dares to say so to his master only when they can speak alone. Its counterpart comes in Part Two, when Don Quixote orders the cage of a lion opened, and its echo, at the end of the book, in a cage of crickets that Sancho buys from a boy for four quartos.
Where It Appears
The trap is set in chapter XLVI of Part One, after the constables give up on the warrant because the priest convinces them that the gentleman is mad. The priest rigs the machine with what the gentleman has read: a fearsome voice, a prophecy of lion and dove, a promise of valiant cubs.
la cual se acabará cuando el furibundo león manchado con la blanca paloma tobosina yoguieren en uno, ya después de humilladas las altas cervices al blando yugo matrimoñesco; de cuyo inaudito consorcio saldrán a la luz del orbe los bravos cachorros, que imitarán las rumpantes garras del valeroso padre, which will end when the furious spotted lion and the white dove of Toboso lie together, after their lofty necks have been humbled to the gentle yoke of matrimony; from whose unheard-of union the brave cubs will come to light in the world, who will imitate the bursting claws of their valiant father.
The gentleman answers as to a wise friend, and not as to one who has imprisoned him: he asks the enchanter not to let him perish in prison before seeing the promises fulfilled.
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 charge of my affairs not to let me perish in this prison to which they are now taking me, until I see fulfilled such joyful and incomparable promises as those made to me here.
In chapter XLVII of Part One, caged in the oxcart, he finds what he sees strange: he never read of enchanted persons being carried like this, slowly, by sluggish beasts, and he concludes that the chivalry and enchantments of his time must follow a different path from the ancients'. Sancho says the visions do not seem altogether Catholic to him, and he judges by smell.
Par Dios, señor -replicó Sancho-, ya yo los he tocado; y este diablo que aquí anda tan solícito es rollizo de carnes, y tiene otra propiedad muy diferente de la que yo he oído decir que tienen los demonios; porque, según se dice, todos huelen a piedra azufre y a otros malos olores; pero éste huele a ámbar de media legua, By God, sir, replied Sancho, I have already touched them; and this devil who is so solicitous here is plump of flesh, and has another property very different from the one I have heard demons have; for, as it is said, they all smell of brimstone and other foul odors; but this one smells of ambergris half a league away.
Still in chapter XLVII of Part One, when the canon of Toledo asks what it means to carry a man like this, the gentleman says he is traveling enchanted by the envy and fraud of wicked enchanters, and Sancho retorts that his master is enchanted the way his mother is: he eats, drinks, and attends to his needs like everyone else.
In chapter XLVIII of Part One, Sancho comes to the cage when he can speak alone with his master, tells him that the two covered men are the priest and the barber and that he is fooled and dazed, and wants to prove it with a question about the body: whether, since he has been caged, he has felt the urge to pass water or the greater and lesser needs. The gentleman answers that often, and that he feels it even now, and asks that they take him out of there.
In chapter XLIX of Part One, Sancho's proof is stated in full, and the master's answer does not dispute it.
De donde se viene a sacar que los que no comen, ni beben, ni duermen, ni hacen las obras naturales que yo digo, estos tales están encantados; pero no aquellos que tienen la gana que vuestra merced tiene y que bebe cuando se lo dan, y come cuando lo tiene, y responde a todo aquello que le preguntan, From which it follows that those who do not eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor perform the natural functions I mention, these are enchanted; but not those who have the appetite your grace has, and who drink when given drink, and eat when they have it, and answer everything they are asked.
The gentleman grounds the certainty that suffices for him: he knows he is enchanted, and his conscience would tell him otherwise if he thought he was not.
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 I hold it that I go enchanted, and this suffices for the security of my conscience; which would be very great if I thought I was not enchanted and let myself remain in this cage, lazy and cowardly, defrauding the aid I could give to many needy and destitute people who must have my help and protection at this moment of precise and extreme need.
At the stop where the canon and the priest let him out of the cage, at Sancho's request, he gives his word as a knight not to leave until they wish it, and adds that the enchanted man is not free to do with himself as he likes.
In chapter L of Part One, now out of it, the gentleman recounts it as a past imprisonment: although he saw himself caged like a madman, he expects to see himself king of some realm within a few days. In chapter LII of Part One, the cage is left behind: the oxherd settles him on a bundle of hay, and after six days on the road the cart crosses the village square at noon on a Sunday, with everyone gathered.
a cabo de seis días llegaron a la aldea de don Quijote, adonde entraron en la mitad del día, que acertó a ser domingo, y la gente estaba toda en la plaza, after six days they reached the village of Don Quixote, where they entered at midday, which happened to be a Sunday, and the people were all in the square.
In Part Two the cage returns as memory. In chapter I of Part Two, the barber tells the gentleman the story of the licentiate of Seville who thought himself sane and, when leaving the asylum, consoled a raging madman in his cage; Don Quixote reads it as a snare set for himself. In chapter VII of Part Two, the housekeeper tells the bachelor that the first time they brought him back draped across a donkey, beaten with sticks, and the second time in an oxcart, caged, so thin and yellow that his mother would not have known him, and that she spent more than six hundred eggs to bring him back to himself. In chapter XXXII of Part Two, before the dukes, he himself speaks of it when he explains why he does not have the grace of not being enchanted: he has already found himself shut in a cage, where the whole world would not have locked him in except by the force of enchantment.
In chapter XVII of Part Two, the lion keeper opens the cage of the first lion at the gentleman's order, and the gentleman, on foot with his sword drawn, waits for the beast.
el generoso león, más comedido que arrogante, no haciendo caso de niñerías, ni de bravatas, después de haber mirado a una y otra parte, como se ha dicho, volvió las espaldas y enseñó sus traseras partes a don Quijote, y con gran flema y remanso se volvió a echar en la jaula, the generous lion, more moderate than arrogant, paying no heed to childish antics or bravado, after looking to one side and the other, as has been said, turned his back and showed his hindquarters to Don Quixote, and with great calm and composure lay back down in the cage.
The lion keeper, who does not want to rouse the animal, gives him the rule of the challenge: the lion has the door open, and whoever waits and the other does not come, wins.
El león tiene abierta la puerta: en su mano está salir, o no salir; pero, pues no ha salido hasta ahora, no saldrá en todo el día. La grandeza del corazón de vuesa merced ya está bien declarada: ningún bravo peleante, según a mí se me alcanza, está obligado a más que a desafiar a su enemigo y esperarle en campaña; y si el contrario no acude, en él se queda la infamia, y el esperante gana la corona del vencimiento, The lion has the door open: it is in his hand to come out or not; but since he has not come out until now, he will not come out all day. The greatness of your grace's heart is already well declared: no brave fighter, as far as I understand, is obliged to more than to challenge his enemy and wait for him in the field; and if the opponent does not come, the infamy remains with him, and the one who waited wins the crown of victory.
In chapter LXXIII of Part Two, at the entrance to the village, where the book ends in omens, Sancho takes four quartos from his pouch, pays the boy for a cage of crickets that the boy had taken from another, and places it in Don Quixote's hands, as proof that the omens are broken and undone.
What It Means
The cage is the scene in which the novel comes closest to what its characters think of the gentleman and least strives to hide it. The priest built it with the language of the books because he knew that the gentleman would accept only an explanation that came from them, and the gentleman accepts it because it gives him back a reason to stay still: if he is enchanted, he is not to blame for failing to aid the needy; if he were not, he would be cowardly for staying. The argument of chapter XLIX of Part One does not answer Sancho's proof, it answers another question, that of what he should do, and so Sancho's proof, correct in its facts, does not touch the belief.
The two cages mirror each other. In the one in chapter XLVI of Part One, the gentleman is shut in by others, who use what he has read to carry him off safely, and he gets out of it, at the stop, only when he gives his word that he will not flee. In the one in chapter XVII of Part Two, he opens the cage, faces the beast, and asks for a certificate from the lion keeper, and it is the lion who does not come out. Between the two, the book asks who the animal on display is: in the first the one on display is the man, in an oxcart along the road, and in the second it is the lion, and the gentleman needs someone to bear witness that he waited. The cricket cage of chapter LXXIII of Part Two closes the series on a minimal scale: no one is shutting anyone in anymore, and a squire buys for four quartos a small captivity to undo an omen. Two readings: Sancho learned from the cage that what cannot be undone by argument can be undone with a gesture, and the cage is his way of looking after his master; or the cage is only an omen undone by someone who does not believe in omens, and the link with the oxcart belongs to the reader, not to the text.
Relationships
- The work: Don Quixote.
- Standard themes: Madness, Freedom and Oppression, Appearance and Reality.
- Themes of the work: Madness, Freedom and Oppression, Appearance and Reality.
- Characters: Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, the priest and the barber, Cardenio.
- Neighboring symbols: the books of chivalry, from which comes the language in which the cage is built, and the inn, from which it sets out.