Don Quijote's Journey to an Inn

Lesson 20: Sancho’s penitence 58
Lesson 21: Sancho’s letter to Teresa 63
Chapter 34 - 35 review 61
Lesson 22: The Countess Trifaldi’s conflict with the giant Malambruno 65
Lesson 23: The problematic relationships between men and their love objects 67
Lesson 1: Sancho defies his master’s authority 6
Introduction 4
Lesson 2: Don Quijote arrives to the hermitage and then at the inn 8
Lesson 3:“The Braying Tale” 10
Lesson 4: Master Pedro’s arrival 12
Chapters 24 - 26
Lesson 5: “The Spectacle of Melisendra’s Liberty” 14
Chapter 27 - 29 29
Lesson 6: Master Pedro’s identity 19
Lesson 7: All about“just war” 21
Chapters 27 - 31
Lesson 8: The feudal bond between Don Quijote and Sancho 23
Lesson 11: The reception of Don Quijote at the court of the Duke and Duchess 33
Lesson 9:“The Adventure of the Enchanted Boat” 25
Lesson 12: On the nature of social relations 35
Lesson 10: The Duke and the Duchess 31
Chapters 35 - 38
Lesson 17: The Duke and Duchess play some elaborate tricks 51
Lesson 18: The third and final appearance of Dulcinea 53
Lesson 19: Merlin and Dulcinea’s arrival 55
Lesson 24: The amorous adventure of Antonomasia and Clavijo 69
Chapters 32 - 34
Lesson 13: Don Quijote’s response to the ecclesiastic 40
Lesson 15: Dulcinea’s perfection 44
Lesson 14: Don Quijote’s humiliation 42
Lesson 16: Sancho and the Duchess 46
2
Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha
donquijote.ufm.edu/en
Part II
Chapters 24 - 47
Index

Lesson 29: Don Quijote, liberator of maidens 83 Chapter 45 - 47 review 116
Lesson 35: Don Quijote refuses the Duchess’s offer 98
Lesson 36: Altisidora’s ballad 100
Chapters 39 - 41 Chapters 45 - 47
Chapters 42 - 44
Lesson 25: Trifaldi finishes the story of Antonomasia and Clavijo 72 Lesson 37: Sancho resolves three legal cases 105
Lesson 30: Sancho prepares to rule his isle 88
Lesson 26: Don Quijote lifts the spell 77 Lesson 39: Don Quijote sings a ballad to Altisidora 109
Lesson 32: Don Quijote’s second round of princely advice 92
Lesson 28: The Clavileño Adventure 81 Lesson 41: Sancho defends the state 113
Lesson 34: The intrusion of Cide Hamete Benengeli 96
Chapter 36 - 39 review 75 Lesson 38:“Justice, Sir Governor, justice...!” 107
Lesson 31: Don Quijote’s princely advice 90
Lesson 27:“Clavileño the Swift” 79 Lesson 40: The conflict between Sancho and Recio 111
Lesson 33: Sancho Panza’s refrains 94
3
Part II
Chapters 24 - 47
Course activities 117

H
ello everyone. I want to congratulate you
for making it this far in the course. If you
have been with us since the beginning of
part one, you have watched nearly 140 videos in which
we have accompanied Don Quijote in his journey as a
knight errant.
As you can see, there has been an evolution in the
format of our course, and I hope as well an evolution
in each of you. You will also have noticed a similar
evolution in our story, which has become more dark
and in which we see that Don Quijote is now far more
conscious of the world around him. In the 1615 novel
he is no longer the same madman that we saw in the
first pages of the novel of 1605.
With this video we begin San Martín de Tours,
that is, the second module of part two of our course
Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha.
LET’S BEGIN!

“A man is a wolf rather
than a man to another
man, when he hasn’t
yet found out what
he’s like”.
—Plautus, Asinaria

6
LESSON01
Sancho defies his
master’s authority
C
hapter twenty-four begins with another series of narrative frames supposedly involved in the writing of Don Quijote. The
narrator tells us that the translator tells us that Cide Hamete Benengeli, the original author, tells us, all in a handwritten note
in the margin of the previous chapter, that he does not believe that Don Quijote could have experienced what he claims.
So we have DQ’s report of what he saw in the Cave of Montesinos, which is reported by Benengeli, all of which is then translated and
retold to us by the narrator. And then we have Benengeli’s doubts in the margin. At the same time, however, Benengeli does not believe
that DQ would lie: “For me to think that Don Quijote would lie, he being the truest hidalgo and the noblest knight of his times,
is impossible, for he would not tell a lie even if they shot him through with arrows.” Indeed, it looks as if DQ would rather be killed
like Saint Sebastian than tell a lie. Now, Benengeli, just like Cervantes in the prologue to part one, leaves everything up to the reader:
“You, reader, since you are prudent, judge for yourself.” To top things off, Benengeli says that other unnamed witnesses claim that
DQ retracted the whole story on his deathbed: “it is held to be certain that at the time of his death and passing, they say that he
retracted all this and said that he had made it all up because it seemed to him that it was consonant and in accord with what he
had read in his histories.” Good Lord! Now we have no way to tell if DQ is crazy or simply pretending!
Moving on, the narrator now tells us that the cousin is shocked by SP’s challenge of his master’s authority. Notice how authority is
subverted, both the narrative authority that a writer has over his reader and the social authority that a feudal lord has over his servant.
But the cousin chooses to thank DQ for the day’s adventure, giving four reasons: 1) for having had the pleasure of knowing DQ himself,
2) for now having material for his Spanish Ovid, 3) for having learned that playing cards dates at least from the time of Charlemagne,
according to Durandarte’s use of the phrase “Shut up and deal,” information the cousin will include in his Supplement to Polydore Virgil,
and 4) for now knowing the true origin of the Guadiana River. After the cousin’s speech, DQ makes a cynical observation about how hard
it is to find princes who appreciate good authors. Many critics read this as Cervantes’s own complaint.
Chapter24

The rest of the chapter is an allegorical transition, this time between the Cave of Montesinos of chapter twenty-three and Master
Pedro’s Puppet Show in chapters twenty-five and twenty-six. First, DQ, SP, and the cousin head to a nearby hermitage, which the cousin
claims can lodge them for the night. This leads to a confusing moral disquisition by DQ, who is mildly critical of modern hermits,
observing that their penances are not as strict as those of the past. He concludes, however, with cynical approval: “the hypocrite who
pretends to be good does less harm than the public sinner.” Notice how this is similar to his previous praise for unfaithful wives who
manage to keep their affairs private. Part two of the novel is darker in almost all respects.
“the hypocrite who pretends
to be good does less harm
than the public sinner.”

8
LESSON02
DonQuijotearrives
to the hermitage
and then at the inn
N
ow we meet the first of the chapter’s two fellow travelers. A man walks on foot, urgently prodding a mule that is carrying
weapons used by infantry: “whipping with a stick a male mule which came loaded with lances and halberds.” DQ tells
him to slow down and join them, but the man is in a hurry. He makes two interesting comments. First, he implies that war
is imminent: “the arms you see me carrying here are to be used tomorrow.” Second, he says that if they will stay at a nearby inn
instead of the hermitage, he will tell them about wondrous events: “I’ll recount marvelous things to you.” That’s enough for DQ, who
orders that they head for the inn.
Before arriving at the inn, Cervantes satirizes the hermitage. The cousin wants to stop and have a drink. The hermit is absent, but
they are greeted by a “sub-hermit,” which means the lay sister while also hinting that she is the hermit’s lover. The travelers ask for
expensive wine but she only offers them cheap water. The interlude is short on details, but disillusionment about religion predominates.
Everything sacred about the hermitage turns out to be spoiled, and, by contrast, SP recalls nostalgically the abundance of Camacho’s
wedding and Miranda’s house.
On the way to the inn, we meet the chapter’s second fellow traveler. He also represents war, in fact, a young man, a page, going off
to war. He carries a sword over his shoulder with a bundle tied to it. He is singing a seguidilla, a popular lyric of the day, and, curiously,
the narrator tells us that the cousin committed it to memory. The powerful message requires no interpretation: “Off to war I’ve been
taken / by my wants and needs; / if I had any money, / I would not go indeed” (Cf. John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son”). From the young
man’s conversation with our travelers we learn that he has enlisted in a company of infantry, which will soon depart from the port city
of Cartagena in Murcia. He does this because he’s desperately poor, and although he tried to serve several masters at court, he was
never admitted into a household.
Chapter25

9
The page’s story signals the life of a failed pícaro. It’s one of Cervantes’s tightest portraits of human exploitation and courtly
corruption. The page also alludes to the immoral hermitage we have just visited by comparing his fate to that of being thrown out
of a religious order: “like someone who leaves a religious order before taking his vows and they take away his habit and give
him back his clothes, just so my masters returned to me my own clothes, for, having finished with their business at court, they
went home and took back the regalia which they had only given to maintain appearances.” This is important. The behavior of the
corrupt courtesans is opposite the liberal, magnanimous ideal that Cervantes so often advocates, such as in the portrait of Miranda.
DQ’s disgust at the page’s treatment underscores this criticism: “What stinginess!”
There are five important aspects to the conclusion of this chapter: 1) After DQ sympathizes with the page’s fate and criticizes the
courtly extravagance that fails to create durable employment for such young men, ironically, he still cannot resist praising the soldier’s
life: “there is nothing so honorable and useful on earth as serving God, first, and then one’s king and natural lord, especially
in the exercise of arms.” 2) DQ tells the page not to fear death, citing Julius Caesar: “They asked Julius Caesar, that valiant Roman
emperor, which was the best death, and he responded the unexpected one, the sudden and the unforeseen.” 3) As Cervantes does
in the prologue of part two, DQ cites Terrence regarding his preference for death over retreat: “the soldier is more esteemed when
killed in battle than when alive and safe in flight.” 4) DQ laments the fate of old soldiers who are forgotten, comparing them to old
manumitted Black African slaves: “it is not right to deal with them like those who routinely cut their expenses and give freedom
to their blacks when they are old and can no longer serve, and throwing them out of their house as technically free, instead they
make them slaves to hunger, from which only death can liberate them.” 5) For the first time, DQ acknowledges the existence of an
inn instead of a castle. Both the narrator and SP note this: “they arrived at the inn at dusk, and not without Sancho taking delight
upon seeing that his master judged it to be a real inn and not a castle, as he usually did.”

10
S
o we have social satire in conjunction with DQ’s recognition of an inn. What does this mean? Perhaps we have an answer at
the beginning of chapter twenty-five, which opens with the astounding image of DQ engaged in manual labor for the first
and only time in the entire novel. He is so eager to hear the story of the mule driver from the previous chapter that he assists
the man and gains his favor: “And so he did, sifting the barley for him and cleaning the manger, an act of humility that obliged
the man to willingly recount that which he had asked.” And so the mule driver tells his story to everyone present: “sitting down on
a stone bench, and with Don Quijote next to him, having the cousin, the page, Sancho Panza, and the innkeeper as his senate
and audience.”
“The Braying Tale” is one of the novel’s most beautifully subtle and funny stories. Once again, Cervantes alludes to the problem of
SP’s missing donkey in part one. A councilman from a nearby town lost a donkey, due to the undisclosed activities of one of his servant
girls. Another councilman claims to have seen it: “In the woods... I saw him this morning, without a packsaddle or any trappings
whatsoever, and so skinny that it made me sad to look at him.” After the second councilman takes his own she-ass home, he agrees
to help the first. Note that the first is much obliged and offers to pay: “I’ll try to pay you back in the same currency.” The comedy
comes when the men brag about their ability at imitating ass-calls: “I know how to bray marvelously”; the other responds: “By God,
I’ll concede to nobody, not even the asses themselves.” After they decide to separate, they repeatedly mistake each other for the ass:
“they split up again and went back to braying, and they constantly got confused and kept coming back together again.”
“The
BrayingTale”
LESSON03
“The
BrayingTale”

11
This is all hilarious, but there’s a moral here: “‘Now I say,’said the owner,‘that between you and an ass, comrade, there’s simply no
difference.’” Two men praising each other for being perfect asses is the essence of tribal identity or nationalism. Ironically, recognizing
that we are all asses is also the solution to tribal warfare. Finally, our narrator makes an apostrophe to the reader regarding the fate of
the missing ass, telling us why the ass did not respond to any of the aldermen’s calls: “But how could the poor, unfortunate animal
respond? For they found him in the deepest part of the woods, eaten by wolves.” The owner is not sad in the least. Indeed, it
has been an honor to lose his ass: “for the honor of having heard you bray with such grace, comrade, I consider the labor I have
expended in looking for him to be well worth it, even though I have found him dead.”
There’s more. The man telling the story also explains why he is in such a hurry to deliver the lances and halberds to his town, which
is also that of the braying aldermen. Neighboring towns have been mocking the people from his town by braying in their faces. He
attributes this to the Devil: “the devil, who never sleeps, because he loves to sow and shower quarrels and discord wherever he
can.” He describes young men’s eagerness to mock his town as a hellish turn: “Then the boys joined in, which was like giving it over
to the hands and mouths of all the demons of hell.” Finally, race is an issue: “so well-known are the inhabitants of the town of the
brayers that they are as recognized and differentiated as blacks are from whites.” Things are so out of hand that war is imminent:
“arming themselves and forming a squadron, the mocked have now come out to do battle against the mockers, and neither king
nor rook, neither fear nor shame, can remedy the situation.”
Lord have mercy! Is there any way out of such an absurd civil war? At this moment, Master Pedro arrives with his soothsaying
monkey and his puppet show known as “The Spectacle of Melisendra’s Liberty.” He is dressed in picaresque fashion and the narrator
underscores his large green eyepatch. He asks if there is a room at the inn, and the innkeeper’s expression of enthusiasm alludes to
Spain’s most infamous general: “I’d kick the very Duke of Alba out in order to make room for Master Pedro.” The Duke of Alba was
also known in Cervantes’s day as “the butcher of Flanders” for his brutal repression of the Protestant rebellion there. For anyone seeking
Cervantes’s critique of the sins of Spanish imperialism, these chapters provide evidence.
“And so he did, sifting
the barley for him and
cleaning the manger”

12
LESSON04
Master
Pedro’sarrival
W
ho is Master Pedro? There’s a lot of debate. Note that he is defined by his profession, an entrepreneur entertainer, as
well as his geographical range: he frequents the region known as La Mancha de Aragón, that is, the eastern part of La
Mancha that borders Valencia and Aragón. This geography alone means that Master Pedro carries political meaning.
Valencia and Aragón suffered the most from the Expulsion of the Moriscos between 1609 and 1614, losing between a third and a sixth
of their respective populations. It’s also worth noting that the nobles of the Kingdom of Aragón were particularly enamored of chivalric
romance. In fact, the infantry of Philip II crushed a kind of knightly rebellion in Aragón in 1591. Another way of thinking about this:
the dreamy chivalric fantasy of the Cave of Montesinos in Castilla-La Mancha was the worldview of the nobility of Aragón. In other
words, Master Pedro welcomes DQ into a world he has always dreamed of, and “The Spectacle of Melisendra’s Liberty” is an allegory
for Aragonese independence from Habsburg Castile. Oh, and one last detail. DQ’s journey east is also political. Hidalgos had political
representation at the Court of Aragón; not so in Castile.
Another important aspect of Master Pedro’s arrival is Cervantes’s continued focus on economic value and exchange. The innkeeper
observes that people are prepared to pay for his monkey’s divinations and his puppet show, and Master Pedro responds by saying that
he will moderate his prices. We learn from the innkeeper that Master Pedro is rumored to be wealthy –“it is believed that this Master
Pedro is extremely rich”– and that he charges two reales for his monkey’s answers to people’s questions. Like the Devil, however,
the monkey cannot tell the future, only the past and the present. When SP offers to pay to know what his wife Teresa is presently
doing, Master Pedro underscores the formality of the economic exchange. First services, then payment: “I will not receive payment in
advance without first performing my services.”
Chapter22

13
Before asking his monkey to divine Teresa’s activities, however, Master Pedro shocks everyone by recognizing DQ. He throws himself
at DQ’s feet, describing our knight in epic terms: “I embrace these legs, just as I would embrace the two Pillars of Hercules. Oh
glorious reviver of the now forgotten knight errantry! Oh never sufficiently praised knight, Don Quijote of La Mancha!” He then
tells SP that his wife is drinking wine and preparing flax for weaving. SP is inclined to believe him. DQ’s identity is once again at issue.
He thinks Master Pedro exaggerates, but he is happy to be recognized for who he is: “I give thanks to Heaven, which blessed me
with a soft and compassionate soul, inclined always to do good to all and evil to none.” Notice how DQ’s peaceful vision of himself
contrasts with the pathetic destiny of the young soldier, who lacks the money to inquire into his own future: “If I had any money... I
would ask sir monkey what will happen to me on the journey I am undertaking.”
DQ informs SP that he is concerned that Master Pedro might have made a pact with the Devil: “for only God is permitted to know
all times and occasions.” He wonders why the puppet master has not been arrested by the Inquisition: “I am astonished that he has
not been denounced before the Holy Office.” But then he tells SP an anecdote that proves that divining is just trickery. An astrologer
once predicted that, if mounted on the proper days, a woman’s lap dog would give birth to three pups, one green, one red, and one
mixed. Cervantes again alludes to the mixing of races. SP ignores the anecdote and tells his master to ask Master Pedro to ask his
monkey if what he saw in the Cave of Montesinos was real. Master Pedro says that the monkey is ambivalent: “he says that some of the
things that your grace saw and experienced in said cave are false, and others are true.” With this subterranean uncertainty in the
background, we turn to the show.

14
LESSON05
“The Spectacle of
Melisendra’s Liberty”
C
hapter twenty-six tells of “The Spectacle of Melisendra’s Liberty.” Note that Cervantes has added yet another narrative
frame: a young assistant narrates the actions of the puppets, who are controlled by Master Pedro. Cervantes is at his best
again as he makes a puppet show come to life before our eyes. Melisendra’s rescue from captivity in Moor-controlled Zaragoza
by her husband Gaiferos is a happy version of Montesinos’s tragic story of Durandarte and Belerma.
It is gripping and funny at the same time. The humor again derives from contrasts between an intense melodramatic fantasy and its
mundane and even offensive details. For example, the narrator begins by citing Virgil’s Aeneid, when the Trojan hero tells his story to
his Carthaginian audience: “All fell silent, Tyrians and Trojans together.” Epic sounds of artillery and trumpets emanate from beneath
the stage. But then Master Pedro’s assistant tells us that Gaiferos is playing, of all things, backgammon when the Emperor Charlemagne
chastises him for not rescuing his wife. Similarly, the assistant calls Charlemagne “the putative father of our Melisendra,” meaning
he is not her real father, but also insinuating prostitution. Another prosaic detail: Gaiferos asks his cousin Roland to loan him his sword
“Durindana” for the adventure, but he refuses.
Note the Freudian maneuvers in the story. The entire episode is a projection of DQ’s own journey to Zaragoza. There are also echoes
of the Cave of Montesinos adventure. Here Roland’s sword is actually named. In other words, Cervantes understood the distortions
of the French epic tradition that turned out the figure of Durandarte in the Spanish ballad tradition. Similarly, when Gaiferos rejects
Roland’s help, he alludes to DQ’s subterranean experience: “rather, he says that he alone is enough to rescue his wife, even if she is
being held deep in the center of the earth.” And all of this complicates the matter of ethnicity. Family lines are confusing and Moors
and Francs are in close sexual proximity. For example, a Moor steals a kiss from Melisendra and she reacts violently: “behold how he
kisses her right on the lips, and the quickness with which she spits and wipes them with the white sleeve of her blouse.”
Chapter26

15
Another comical aspect of the show appears in the numerous interruptions of the narrative given by the assistant, who wanders
off after details that interest neither DQ nor Master Pedro. Again, Cervantes mocks certain readers’ impatience with his own style of
storytelling. DQ objects: “follow your story in a straight line and stay away from curves and perpendiculars.” So does Master
Pedro: “continue with your simple song and avoid counterpoints.” But what distracts the assistant is fundamental information about
how Spaniards viewed their conflict with Islam. For example, he describes the punishment of the Moor who dared to kiss Melisendra,
noting that the Moorish King of Zaragoza ordered him to suffer two hundred lashes in public. His point is that the Moors did not follow
any formal rule of law allowing the accused the right to legal self-defense: “because they have no ‘indictment of the accused’ or
‘detention with evidence,’ like we do.” It’s funny, but recall that DQ thinks Master Pedro should be tried by the Inquisition.
So Gaiferos rescues his wife from a prison tower in Zaragoza and dashes off toward Paris. But the Moors sound the alarm: “already
the city echoes with the sounds of the bells which ring out from all the towers of the mosques.” This is a problem. Christians had
bell towers; Moors used drums. DQ knows this and objects to the cultural inaccuracy: “Master Pedro is most improperly inclined
concerning these bells... without a doubt this is great nonsense.” Master Pedro has to convince DQ that, as with modern theater
productions, a certain amount of poetic license is allowed.
DQ accepts Master Pedro’s argument, but when the assistant describes the Moorish knights of Zaragoza chasing after Gaiferos and
Melisendra, it is too much for our hidalgo. Like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, DQ draws his sword and attacks Master Pedro’s
show: “with swift and never before seen fury he began to rain down blows on the Moorish puppetry.” Master Pedro is distraught:
“they’re not really Moors but pasteboard figures. Oh, sinner that I am, you are destroying and doing away with everything I
own!” With historical irony, Master Pedro acts as if he were the last Gothic King Rodrigo who lost Spain to the Moors.
The remainder of the chapter involves a detailed negotiation of DQ’s payment for the damages he has caused Master Pedro. The new
bourgeois world imposes its values on the old. DQ attributes his confusion to his enemy enchanters, but in the end he is willing to pay
more than Master Pedro asks. The innkeeper and, surprisingly, SP are now arbiters in the settling of accounts: “Don’t cry, Master Pedro,
nor wail, for you’re breaking my heart; because I’ll have you know that my lord Don Quijote is such a Catholic and scrupulous
Christian that as soon as he comprehends that he has done you wrong, he will make it known to you and he’ll want to pay and
satisfy you, with interest even.” DQ even adds “two reales for the effort of recovering the monkey,” who has escaped during the
confusion. He then pays for everyone’s dinner –“all dined in peace and good company, at the expense of Don Quijote, who was
liberal in the extreme”–, and finally he gives the poor page “a dozen reales” as he goes off to war. It’s just like the end of part one. The
destruction caused by chivalric fantasy is all made good by a bourgeois miracle.

16
Chapter 24 - 26
review

17
Chapter twenty-four reads like a transition, but, as usual, it’s very dense. The people our
travelers meet make morality and war issues. The page, in particular, is exploited by the corrupt
state. DQ’s praise for war echoes his defense of arms over letters in DQ 1.37-38, as well as the
values of Captain Viedma and probably those of young Cervantes, proud of his service to Western
Christendom at the Battle of Lepanto. Nevertheless, the details of the speech are problematic.
DQ cites Julius Caesar, but Caesars are malevolent figures among humanists like Erasmus and
Vives, and they have already been mocked in DQ 2.8. Moreover, the words of wisdom cited by DQ
were delivered by Caesar just prior to his own death in the Roman Senate and were actually the
prelude to a horrific civil war. As for Terrence’s claim that death is preferable to retreat, well, DQ
himself will retreat in DQ 2.27. And if war is noble, what about a war that is fought for an empire
that now embraces slavery? In the end, Cervantes is more intent on empathizing with abused and
abandoned Black African slaves than with defending DQ’s romantic vision of war. Similarly, “The
Braying Tale” is an allegory for the absurdity of civil war. Then Master Pedro and his mysterious
monkey challenge readers to connect the problem of modern war with chivalric fantasy. This
fantasy is again hilarious, echoing that of the Cave of Montesinos. It has the same basic storyline,
and DQ is particularly enamored of the illusion, so much so, that he ironically attacks it. SP’s
comment at the end of DQ 2.24 following DQ’s ambivalent words on war also bridges the two
chivalric fantasies: “And is it possible that a man who knows how to state all the many and
good things that he has said here can claim to have seen the impossible nonsense that he
says he saw in the Cave of Montesinos?” How does the puppet show end? Well, if we accept DQ’s
vision of reality, then, like war, the show brings destruction and heavy costs. But once again, we
should contrast this destructive fantasy with a down to earth conclusion: SP pays for all Master
Pedro’s damages. Notice also that everyone dines happily at DQ’s expense. As at the end of part
one, a liberal peace has been brought to another chaotic inn.
Let’s review

“Our lives
are like rivers
that flow into the sea”
—Jorge Manrique,
“Coplas a la muerte de su padre”

LESSON06
MasterPedro’s
identity
C
hapter twenty-seven extends “The Braying Tale” of chapter twenty-
five. As such, it also situates Master Pedro’s puppet show between
two halves of a satire of civil war. The chapter opens with another
disorienting intervention by the original Moorish author Cide Hamete
Benengeli. It’s ironic because he swears that he tells the truth as if he were
a Catholic Christian: “Cide Hamete, the chronicler of this great history,
begins this chapter with these words: ‘I swear as a Catholic Christian.’” This
elicits an hilarious and extensive clarification by the translator: “At which the
translator says that when Cide Hamete swore like a Catholic Christian, he
being a Moor, as without a doubt he was, this did not mean anything more
than that just as a Catholic Christian, when he swears, swears or ought to
swear and state the truth in everything he says, thus he too told the truth
as if he had sworn like a Catholic Christian regarding what he wanted to
write about Don Quijote.” Labyrinthically funny, but the interruption again
focuses our attention on the ethnic conflict between Old Christians and the
Moriscos exiled in the years prior to part two of Don Quijote. Benengeli’s oath
recalls for us that the Moriscos were technically Christians who faced mistrust
regarding their loyalty to Spain.
Chapter27
‘I swear as a
CatholicChristian.’

About what does Benengeli swear to tell the truth? The identity of Master Pedro, who turns out to be Ginés de Pasamonte. The
narrator even reminds the reader of DQ’s problematic liberation of the galley slaves in the Sierra Morena in DQ 1.22: “a charitable
gesture that was later poorly appreciated and repaid even worse by those malignant and ill-mannered people.” On the one hand,
this characterization hints at the disloyal Moriscos in Valencia and Aragón. On the other hand, the galley slaves were not Moriscos,
so perhaps religion does not correlate with rebellion. The narrator further recalls the printer’s error regarding “the one who robbed
Sancho Panza’s gray” and the incredible artifice that Pasamonte used to steal the ass from under SP as told by the squire in DQ 2.4.
Note also the detailed presentation of Pasamonte’s relativistic theory of theater, which changes according to his audience: “sometimes
he put on one story, other times another.” Also interesting is that Pasamonte “decided to cross over into the Kingdom of Aragón.”
Perhaps chivalric theater is more welcome there; perhaps this places him beyond reach of Castile’s legal system; perhaps both.
So DQ and SP now head for Zaragoza, presumably following Pasamonte’s route. On the third day of their journey they hear “a great
sound of drums, of trumpets and harquebuses.” Note how this reads like a projection of Master Pedro’s puppet show. The narrator
tells us that DQ “at first thought that a regiment of soldiers was passing through the area.” This alludes to two recent civil wars.
The Castilian infantry repressed the Moriscos in 1568-71 and the Aragonese nobility in 1591. Cervantes’s satire of war is relentless and
hilarious. The people turn out to be a squadron of about two hundred men marching under ridiculous banners, one in particular: “one
especially, which was written on a standard or a banner of white satin, on which was painted a most lifelike ass that looked like
a small Sardinian, with head raised, mouth open, and tongue out, acting and standing as if it were braying.” Under the image is
a motto: “They did not bray in vain / neither of the two mayors.” “The Braying Tale” has now become “The Braying Adventure.”
«menos mal hace el
hipócrita que se finge bueno
que el público pecador»

21
LESSON07
All about
“just war”
D
Q immediately observes that the original storyteller made a mistake, because he had called the brayers “aldermen” (regidores)
instead of “magistrates” (alcaldes). SP objects that DQ is being overly picky, adding that the aldermen might have become
magistrates. Either way, DQ and SP realize that these men are from the town offended at being mocked by their neighbors,
whom they now plan to attack. DQ approaches the ass banner and delivers a long harangue in which he urges the men to lay down their
arms. Let’s attend to DQ’s details and his meandering logic.
First, DQ points out that an entire town cannot be offended by a particular individual. But then he brings up a case in which this
actually did happen: Diego Ordóñez de Lara, who upon the infamous murder of King Sancho II by Vellido Dolfos during the siege of
Zamora, subsequently challenged the entire city. DQ then points out that Ordóñez went too far, citing a popular ballad: “although it is
true that Sir Don Diego went a little too far and even went beyond the limits of a proper challenge, because he had no reason to
challenge the dead, the water, the bread, the unborn, or all the other things that are mentioned there.” DQ argues it is absurd for
people to go to war over name calling: “No and no, God would neither want nor permit it!” Next, mixing tradition and natural law, he
gives four reasons why people and republics are indeed permitted to go to war: 1) “in defense of the Catholic faith,” 2) “in defense
of one’s own life, which is a natural and divine right,” 3) “in defense of one’s honor,” 4) “in the service of one’s king in a just war.”
Then, he awkwardly adds a fifth reason, perhaps most related to the forth: “in defense of one’s country.” Note the tenuous status of
this modern appeal to nationalism.
The deeper problem, of course, is ancient. How is a “just war” defined? DQ appeals to reason, saying that none of the five reasons
for taking up arms apply in this case: “he who takes them up for childish trifles and matters that are more laughable and amusing
than offensive appears to lack all commonsense.” He goes even further, appealing to Christian morality, in particular, Matthew 5.44,
which Cervantes cited in Latin in the prologue to DQ part one: “taking unjust revenge, for there’s no such thing as just revenge,
goes directly against the holy law that we profess, according to which we are commanded to do good to our enemies and to
love those who hate us.” He concludes by triumphantly calling on these men to cease and desist: “And so, dear sirs, your graces are

22
obliged by laws both divine and human to make peace.” SP is impressed, marveling to himself that DQ is a theologian: “The Devil
take me... if this my master isn’t a thelogian; and if he’s not, well he’s as close as one egg is to another.” Notice our access to SP’s
internal thoughts here and the equivalence between one egg and another. This is humanist morality on display.
Hilariously, SP now takes his turn chastising the townsmen: “it’s foolish to get angry just because you hear somebody bray.”
But his mind wanders and he recalls his own braying abilities as a young man: “I remember, when I was a boy, I brayed where and
whenever I wished, without anybody holding me back, and with such grace and propriety that when I brayed, all the asses in
the town brayed back.” SP then gives the townsmen a sample of the “science” of braying: “And so you’ll see that I speak the truth,
wait and listen, for this science is like that of swimming: once you learn, you never forget.” It’s an amazing moment: “And then,
his hand on his nose, he began to bray so loudly that all the nearby valleys echoed the sound.” But the townsmen take offense and
one of them strikes SP to the ground.
At this point, all of the talk of violence and war in the past four chapters reaches a tipping point. DQ’s instinct is to avenge SP by
attacking the man that struck him, but he is prevented from doing so, not because of Christ’s injunction against revenge, but because
he is outnumbered: “but so many men got between them that it was impossible to avenge him.” He retreats, checking his body for
bullet holes as he flees. Meanwhile, the townsmen sling SP over his ass and let him go. The narrator’s report of the townsmen’s joy at
their epic victory is hilarious: “if they had known the ancient Greek tradition, they would have erected a monument at that very
spot and place.” Cervantes has reduced the most famous wars of classical history, such as the Trojan War, to a matter of bickering over
ass calls.

23
C
hapter twenty-eight opens with another ridiculous sounding subtitle: “Concerning things that Benengeli says will be
known by he who reads him, if he reads them with attention.” Is this absurd humor? Or could Cervantes be signaling
something? Let’s do as Benengeli says and read carefully. The chapter focuses on the increasingly tenuous relationship
between master and servant. SP feels betrayed. In other words, the feudal bond between DQ and SP has just been tested in the heat
of battle, and DQ’s constant insistence on his squire’s loyalty now seems hypocritical. First, SP slips off his ass. It’s cinematographic:
“once he had regained consciousness, he rode up to Don Quijote and let himself slip off his gray at Rocinante’s feet, anxious,
thrashed, and badly beaten.” The narrator adopts DQ’s rhetorical style here: “Don Quijote dismounted and didst tend to his squire’s
lacerations.” DQ then has the temerity to be angry: “In an evil hour didst thou take to braying, Sancho!”
SP’s response is brutal: “I will silence my braying, but I will never keep silent about how knights errant flee and leave their
good squires to be thrashed like privet or chaff at the hands of their enemies.” Notice the milling theme from DQ 1.5 and 1.8. DQ
justifies his actions with classical wisdom: “He who retreats does not flee... because you should know, Sancho, that valor which
is not drawn from the base of prudence is called recklessness.” Here DQ appeals to Aristotelian moderation, in medio virtus. But
this contradicts his argument in DQ 2.24, where he had quoted Terence’s phrase: “the soldier who dies in battle is more esteemed
than the one who survives in flight.” SP complains of pain and DQ pedantically states the obvious: SP’s pain owes to the fact that the
townsmen hit him on his back, which results in the most pain, and the more they hit him the more pain he feels. SP now becomes more
sarcastic than anywhere in the novel: “By God... your grace has cleared up for me a great doubt, and you have put it so beautifully,
too! By my body! Was the cause of my pain so mysterious that it was necessary to tell me that I hurt everywhere that I was
struck?”
The feudal
bond between
Don Quijote
and Sancho
LESSON08
“Don Quijote dismounted
and didst tend to his
squire’s lacerations.”
Chapter28

24
The tension between master and servant grows. SP is fed up. He anticipates Voltaire’s warning against adventurism: “I would do
much better by myself, I say again, if I were to return home to my wife and children and support her and rear them with that
which God has deigned to give me, and not go chasing after your grace down dead-end roads and trails and highways leading
nowhere, short on drink and worse on food.” DQ calls his squire’s bluff, telling him to leave. Notice the more formal “vos” manner of
address: “God forbid that I should stop you: you have my money, and you can add up how long ago we left our village on this
third sally; so calculate what you can and should earn each month and pay yourself by your own hand.” Oops! DQ has just placed
the issue of SP’s salary on the table again. What follows is an intense negotiation.
If we read carefully here, we learn a lot. SP normally works for Tomé Carrasco, the father of Sansón. He receives a salary: “I earned
two ducados each month, in addition to meals.” The squire then lists the harsher conditions of his present occupation. DQ agrees:
“Suppose I confess... that all you say, Sancho, is correct: How much do you think I should pay you beyond what Tomé Carrasco
did?” SP calculates further: “I think... if your grace added two reales to my monthly salary, I would consider myself well paid.”
Then he adds six more reales per month to cover the promised island, which has yet to materialize, and comes up with a total: “as for
fulfilling your grace’s word and promise made to grant me governorship of an isle, it would be right to add another six reales,
which comes to a total of thirty.” Note the amazing amount of information here regarding labor rates and the values of distinct
currencies. We now know, for example, that a ducado is worth eleven reales.
Remarkably, DQ accepts the proposal of thirty reales per month: “Very well... calculate, Sancho, the rate times the amount, and
determine what I owe you and pay yourself, as I have said, by your own hand.” But negotiations break down over the time of SP’s
service. DQ says they have been travelling for twenty-five days. SP rightly wants to count the previous sally in part one. But he calculates
an outrageous total period of service: “it has to be more than twenty years, give or take three days.” This is 240 times as much as DQ
has just agreed to pay. DQ concedes a bit, agreeing to two months of total service. But he maintains his feudal position and again points
out that there are no salaries for squires in the novels of chivalry: “where have you seen or read that any squire of a knight errant
has engaged his master in ‘you should give me a little more each month for my services?’” He adds that if SP finds such evidence,
he will submit to having it nailed to his forehead and having his face mussed four times. Messing with faces will be important in future
episodes, as will this salary negotiation.
In the end, DQ indicates the Apuleian subtext of all this. He submits that SP is an ass: “You are an ass, and you will always be an
ass, and you will end the course of your life as an ass.” SP admits as much and retracts his request: “My lord, I confess that in order
to be a complete ass I lack but the tail, and if your grace wants to attach it to me, I will consider it well-placed, and I will serve
you as an ass for the rest of the days of my life.” Our heroes make up, rest, and then proceed east, “in search of the banks of the
famous Ebro.”

25
LESSON09
“The Adventure
of the Enchanted
Boat”
C
hapter twenty-nine relates “The Adventure of the Enchanted Boat.” Finding a small fishing boat tied to a tree on the banks of
the Ebro River, DQ explains that they must board it. This might strike modern readers as odd, but it perfectly parodies similar
events found in the books of chivalry, in which mysterious empty boats transport knights-errant to far off lands where other
adventures await them. DQ explains: “this is in accord with the books of chivalry and the enchanters.” SP reasons that the boat is
probably owned by some local fishermen, but he still submits to the feudal relationship, with its proverbial promise of future rewards
at his master’s proverbial table: “there’s nothing to do but obey and lower my head, following the proverb: ‘Do what your master
commands and sit with him at his table.’”
Notable here is SP’s immediate panic at being adrift. Moreover, he laments the cries of his ass, whom they left tied to a tree with
Rocinante: “he began to tremble, fearing his perdition, but nothing caused him greater pain than the sound of his gray braying
and the sight of Rocinante struggling to break free.” DQ tells him not to worry and considers how far they have travelled: “we must
have emerged from the river and travelled at least seven hundred or eight hundred leagues... we have already passed, or are
about to pass, the equinoctial line.” It’s an absurd and ironic estimate: DQ may have a more reasonable sense of time than his squire;
but he has zero sense of distance.
Chapter29

26
Now DQ produces a long parody of cosmography, focusing on the international scope of the Spanish Empire and hinting at the
scientific advancements of the day. He mentions the astrolabe, an instrument crucial for navigation, and refers to the calculation of
one’s latitude using the pole star. But he also clings to a Ptolemaic view of the cosmos, which yielded to the Copernican system in the
middle of the sixteenth century. Similarly, DQ’s story about fleas dying when sailors crossed the equator during voyages between Cádiz
and the West Indies mocks a common belief. Note DQ’s strange allusion to economic incentive as proof. Upon crossing the equator no
fleas are found, even if sailors are offered their weight in gold: “without there remaining a single one alive, nor could you find one
anywhere on the ship, even if you were offered its weight in gold.” How much could fleas weigh?
Also funny is DQ’s accumulated list of nautical and astronomical terms with which he befuddles SP: “you don’t know anything
about the colures, lines, parallels, zodiacs, ellipticals, poles, solstices, equinoxes, planets, signs, points, and measurements
which compose the celestial and terrestrial spheres.” Amidst all of this, SP checks for fleas and finds quite a few, thus disproving DQ’s
account of their voyage: “Either your experiment is false or else we have not gone as far as your grace says, not by many leagues.”
Will DQ pay gold for these fleas? Of course not. Next, hidalgo and squire are dragged toward waterwheels (aceñas), used for milling
wheat. DQ takes these for castles in which innocent victims are held against their will. He even confronts the millers who try to steer him
away from certain destruction: “release and give liberty to the person whom you are holding captive in your fortress or prison.”
SP prays for divine intervention, but the narrator specifies that they are saved not by a miracle but by the efforts of the millers:
“Sancho fell to his knees, devoutly praying to heaven to free him from that manifest danger, which it did via the industry and
quickness of the millers, who stopped the boat by pushing their poles against it.” The phrase recalls Basilio’s trick at Camacho’s
wedding. Bourgeois reality to the rescue once again! To be more precise, however, the narrator says that the heavens worked their
magic indirectly, i.e., by way of the millers’ industry. This is an excellent distinction between the humanist belief system and those of
Europe’s many religious fanatics. Still, the boat is destroyed and knight and squire must be rescued by the millers, who actually dive into
the river to save them. Funny here is the narrator’s contradictory description of DQ: “this was fine by Don Quijote, who knew how to
swim like a goose, although the weight of his arms took him to the bottom on two occasions.” DQ and SP avert a Trojan defeat. SP
is annoyed, but he still pays the fishermen fifty reales for the destruction of their boat.

27
Note DQ’s reaction. First he accepts defeat, turning melancholic and stoic because he cannot help those trapped in the castle: “This
adventure must be destined and reserved for another knight.” Cervantes scholars often read this as the beginning of the final fallen
phase of DQ’s adventures. Even more interesting, DQ formulates the fruitlessness of his endeavors as a matter of two conflicting magical
forces that have combined to neutralize his free will. He says this to himself: “Enough!... in this adventure two valiant enchanters
must being doing battle, and one blocks what the other attempts: one bestowed this boat upon me and the other tossed me
from it. May God save us, for the world is but machinations and deceptions all opposing one another. I can’t go on.” Astonishing!
DQ has come to terms with the idea that the events of reality, perhaps of History itself, are beyond the control of a single man. Here is
the Romantic hero of the nineteenth century, lost, dark, solipsistic, and resigned to defeat.
“release and give liberty
to the person whom you
are holding captive in
your fortress or prison.”

28
Chapter 27 - 29
review

29
In these chapters, Cervantes extends his mockery of civil war as asinine and
absurd. Then we have the employment negotiations between squire and hidalgo,
complete with intense details regarding SP’s regular salary. The trip down the
Ebro River is like a broken baptism, as well as a review of familiar themes: we have
another mill, another beating, and another monetary reparation for damages to
property. Think of “The Adventure of the Enchanted Boat” as Cervantes hitting
the reset button. But keep in mind DQ’s fallen state of mind, which anticipates
Romanticism by two hundred years. More than a tabula rasa, this is a dark tabula
rasa. Now we are ready for the complex series of episodes at the mysterious palace
of the unnamed Duke and the Duchess, near the Ebro River and Zaragoza, the
capital of Aragón.
Let’s review

“Now if, as I was saying
just now, they were to
laugh at me, as you say
they do at you, it would
not be at all unpleasant
to pass the time at the
court with jests and
laughter.”
—Platón, Euthyphro

31
I
n chapter thirty our heroes meet the Duke and Duchess, two major characters who will remain unnamed throughout the remainder
of part two. This brief but highly symbolic chapter has implications for feminist readings of DQ. It also develops further the links
between the text of 1605 and that of 1615. The Duke and Duchess state clearly that they have read the first part of DQ and the
narrator informs us that they plan on having fun with knight and squire.
The chapter begins with our heroes depressed after the Adventure of the Boat, especially SP, “whose soul suffered for having to
reach into the moneybag.” The narrator even tells us that SP resolves to leave his master: “he sought an occasion on which, without
having to account to his master or say goodbye, one day he might tear himself away and go home.” But this idea evaporates when
DQ and SP enter a meadow in which they find a hunting party, dominated by “an elegant woman mounted atop a pure white palfrey
or trotter pony, adorned with green trappings and a silver saddle,” clear signs of nobility.
DQ sends SP on an “embassy” to greet this woman and SP happily obliges him, alluding ironically to his previous mission to find
Dulcinea: “You know, this isn’t the first time that I’ve gone on embassies to high born ladies in this life.” SP communicates to
her DQ’s desire “to serve your lofty highness and beauteousness,” and the Duchess recognizes “the one with the Sorrowful Face,
about whom we have heard much in these parts” and expresses her approval: “tell your master that he is most welcome to serve
me and the Duke, my husband, at a country estate we have nearby.” She then verifies with SP that DQ is “the one about whom
there is now a printed history called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Mancha.” SP’s affirmation of his own identity
exhibits meta-literary playfulness: “And I am Sancho Panza, unless they switched me with another in the cradle, I mean in the
press.” The narrator makes clear the perspective of the nobles: “the two of them, having read the first part of this history and
The Duke and
the Duchess
LESSON10
“develops further the
links between the text of
1605 and that of 1615”
Chapter30

32
having understood from it the twisted mental state of Don Quijote, were desirous of knowing him and waited for him with great
pleasure.” He then explains that they plan to treat DQ “like a knight errant, during all the time that he would stay with them and
with all the ceremonies that are customary in the books of chivalry, which they had read and of which they were fond.” We see
here that the Aragonese nobility were fanatics about all things chivalric. Indeed, Aragón is perhaps the only place where DQ would have
been truly at home. The jousts in Zaragoza that attract DQ throughout part two make perfect sense.
Now Cervantes provides slapstick humor, but it’s also symbolic of overarching tragedy, a fall from grace. As DQ approaches, SP falls
off his ass, and DQ, unaware that SP is no longer holding his stirrup, also falls off Rocinante. The Duke expresses regret, and DQ responds
with a hyperbole that is both ominous and funny. The hidalgo considers himself fortunate to have met this “most valiant prince... even
if my fall were to have carried me to the depths of the abyss.” Then he praises the Duchess “noble mistress of beauty and universal
princess of courtesy.” The Duke undercuts DQ’s praise, pointing out that “when my lady Doña Dulcinea is involved, it’s not proper
to praise other beauteousnesses.” So not only SP but also the Duke are imitating DQ’s antiquated rhetoric via the medieval ‘F’ instead
of the modern ‘H.’
SP’s comment is fascinating and sophisticated: “I have heard it said that what they call nature is like a potter who makes vases
out of clay, and he who makes a beautiful vase can make two, or three, or a hundred: I say this because, by my faith, my lady the
Duchess does not lag in beauty to my mistress lady Dulcinea of Toboso.” The “clay potter” recalls the giant urns of El Toboso made
by Moriscos, which we saw at Miranda’s house and Camacho’s wedding. But there’s more going on here. SP alludes to the Demiurge, a
mediating entity between the spiritual and the material worlds. Similarly, DQ refers to the Duchess as “your great celestialness.” The
basis of modern feminism is respect for women. Here we see how much feminism owes to the Renaissance philosophy of Neoplatonism,
which viewed women as divine manifestations, i.e., material projections of metaphysical perfection.
DQ is ashamed of his squire’s blunders and loquaciousness. Cervantes’s comedic use of this theatrical contrast will characterize DQ
and SP’s time at the ducal palace. Hidalgo and squire now begin to play a modern kind of comedic odd couple, poking fun at each
other’s antics and delighting in each other’s errors. Note also that the Duchess clearly favors SP. He will be her personal jester. There’s
something very modern about this, too. Cervantes reconfigures medieval courtly love by adding humor as a factor of attraction on par
with power, prestige, and wealth.
The Duke now invites our hero to his palace: “I suggest that Sir Knight of the Lions come to a castle of mine which is nearby,
where he will find himself received with the dignity that his high person should justly expect.” As the group departs, the narrator
produces yet another of a growing list of wordplays contrasting DQ and SP: “to the great pleasure of the Duke and the Duchess, who
considered it their great fortune to welcome to their castle this errant knight and this squandered squire.”

33
A
t the beginning of chapter thirty-one the narrator notes that SP was happy to find himself “in the favor of the Duchess.”
He senses a positive experience, like those at the houses of Miranda and Basilio. The narrator also informs us of the first
illusion performed for DQ by the Duke and Duchess. It’s an improvised reception for the chivalric hero. Note how their
abode is referred to as a “country estate or castle,” echoing but also contrasting with the “palace or citadel” that Cervantes often
uses in reference to Dulcinea. Two servants appear, dressed in crimson robes of satin, and remove DQ from his horse. At the same time,
two maidens “threw over the shoulders of Don Quijote a great cloak of fine scarlet” (cf. El Greco’s El expolio and Sargent’s Dr. Pozzi
at Home). DQ then attempts to assist the Duchess but she insists on dismounting “in the arms of the Duke.” Perhaps this refers to the
supposedly platonic nature of courtly love. The entire staff then sprinkles DQ with perfumed water, praising him as “the flower and
cream of all knights errant.” The scene marks a major shift: “that was the first day on which he roundly and thoroughly knew and
believed that he was a true knight errant and not a fantastical one.” The scene also contains bitter irony in the fact that DQ, who so
often insists that “valiant knights” are superior to “courtly knights,” now finds validation in this regal reception at the court of the Duke
and Duchess. In retrospect, DQ’s slapstick fall from Rocinante now makes sense. It’s classical tragedy: DQ betrays his ideals.
Right after the narrator’s crucial observation about DQ’s new status, SP gets into an argument with one of the Duchess’s maids
regarding his ass. It’s one of those detailed divergences from the main story that modern readers might find difficult to understand.
Just remember that SP’s ass marks all sorts of social, ethical, and racial problems. Here, Cervantes alludes to the moral hypocrisy of
those who succeed in life forgetting about the fate of those who share their roots. Like his tragically transformed master, SP now feels
so empowered that he mistreats other servants. The narrator even underscores that SP feels guilty about his attempt to stay close to
the Duchess: “abandoning his gray, he fastened himself to the Duchess and went inside the castle; and when his conscience
bothered him for having left the gray alone, he approached a respected duenna, who had come out with the other ladies to
greet the Duchess.”
The reception of Don
Quijote at the court of
the Duke and Duchess
LESSON11Chapter31

SP asks this woman, Doña Rodríguez, to make sure that his ass is taken to the stable. She rebukes him and he claims he deserves
more respect from her. Curiously, while noting his master’s identification with Lancelot, SP calls him “a diviner of the histories,”
meaning that DQ perceives the deeper meaning of chivalric texts. Note how SP emphasizes the art of literary interpretation, what we
might call careful reading. The irony, of course, is that SP continues to overvalue his ass: “when it comes to my ass, I would not trade
it for the nag of Sir Lancelot.” Furthermore, he insults Doña Rodríguez, first forgetting her name, and then calling her old by way of
a sophisticated metaphor based on counting the value of cards: “if years are points, your grace would never lose at any hand of
cards.” Doña Rodríguez understands the mathematical insult. Does the reader understand the text? Doña Rodríguez reports the insult
to the Duchess and SP tries to excuse himself: “I only said it because I’m so concerned about my ass.” Then the Duke calms SP in a
way that recalls the equivalency between squire and ass: “relax Sancho, for he will be treated as if he were your very person.”
This ethical lesson about social status continues when servants attempt to dress DQ with a new shirt. Note the directional, even
sadistic, nature of humor and laughter here. The servants and the nobles laugh at DQ’s appearance: “dry, tall, and thin, with cheeks
that kissed each other in the middle of his mouth.” They must work to “hide their laughter.” Curiously, when they offer DQ the shirt,
at first he refuses it, insisting they give it to SP, but then he takes SP into an adjacent bedroom and puts it on himself. The odd shift
occurs in a single sentence: “Even so, he told them to give the shirt to Sancho; and then he went off with him into a room where
there was a luxurious bed, and he stripped naked and put on the shirt.”
DQ then lectures SP about his behavior, insisting that the squire rise to the occasion of their noble hosts. This speech reveals two
things about DQ, and readers who identify with him should feel disillusioned. First, he discloses his extreme anxiety about his own
status. He does not want SP to inadvertently reveal their low origins. Second, he reveals that he too has delusions of grandeur. If they
act well, they’ll be rich: “we’ll come out of this better off by a king’s third or fifth in both fame and wealth.” SP promises to behave
himself and guard the secret of their lowliness: “that never through him would it be disclosed who they really were.” To repeat, all
this betrays the meritocratic values that DQ so often defends. Returning to the main room, DQ dresses the part of a noble guest: “he
girded his belt and sword, threw his scarlet cloak over his shoulders, put on the green riding cap that the maids of honor had
given him, and thus adorned he strode into the main hall.”

35
N
ow we have a dinner scene. Note two aspects: first, the presence of “a gravely serious ecclesiastic like those who often
govern the households of princes”; second, SP’s anecdote about a similar dinner that an hidalgo once held for a farmer.
The ecclesiastic is a complex figure. On the one hand, the narrator tells us that this man has a resentful and overly censorious
personality: “like those who, since they were not born princes themselves, never successfully instruct those who are how they
should be; like those who want the greatest of the nobility to be measured according to the meagerness of their spirits; like
those who, in an effort to show those whom they govern how to be restrained, end up making them miserly.” On the other hand,
he is critical of DQ in a way that recalls Cervantes’s attack on the books of chivalry. He warns the Duke that “it was nonsensical to
read such nonsense” and calls our knight’s antics “stupidities and hollow acts.” This is a paradox. The novel about DQ that the Duke
has been reading is itself a parody of chivalric fantasy, but the ecclesiastic has taken it at face value, as if it were the kind of chivalric
romance criticized by humanists like Erasmus and Vives. Does Cervantes hide his humanist tendencies here? Or does he expose how
humanists can become self-righteous? Either way, he distinguishes between sincere romance and subtle satire.
SP’s anecdote focuses on caste distinctions. As such it’s a miniature version of the chapter we are reading. What prompts SP to tell
his story? He witnesses a battle over decorum between the Duke and DQ. At first, DQ resists sitting at the head of the table, but after
much urging he agrees. The ecclesiastic sits across from him, highlighting their conflict. SP seizes the opportunity: “I’ll tell you a story
that happened in my village concerning this issue of seating arrangements.” Note the comical social discomfort here, as SP tells
DQ that he will not forget his master’s recent advice “about speaking too long and being brief.” SP embarrasses DQ, who is forced to
lie about having given him advice: “I remember no such thing, Sancho.” DQ begs the Duke and Duchess to forgive the impertinence
of his squire, even suggesting “that your highnesses order this fool removed from here.” Hinting at a feminist alliance between her
and SP, the Duchess comes to the squire’s rescue: “Sancho is not to stray from my side so much as a stitch.” He thanks her: “Many
sensible days... may your holiness live for the good faith and credit that you have extended me.”
On the nature of
social relations
LESSON12

36
SP’s anecdote involves real figures from recent Spanish history who were involved in a disastrous military expedition sent to relieve
Spanish troops in North Africa. In other words, SP’s tale assesses Spanish imperialism. He even attempts to get DQ to confirm the
lineages of the characters of his story. DQ admits that his squire tells the truth but urges him to finish quickly. The ecclesiastic is also
annoyed by “the dilations and pauses with which Sancho told his story.” Again, the Duchess defends the squire, saying he should
speak as long as he wishes. And again, we note how often Cervantes’s art of storytelling concerns the art of storytelling.
SP’s story centers on an hidalgo who insisted on honoring his peasant neighbor. The neighbor refused to sit at the head of his host’s
table, but the hidalgo finally forced him to do so: “placing both hands on his shoulders, he forced him to sit down, saying: ‘Sit
down, you idiot, for wherever I sit will be the head of the table for you.’” On its surface, the story is another example of SP’s long-
windedness. If we read carefully, however, it also highlights DQ’s arrogant disregard for his squire. It echoes, for example, the preamble
to DQ’s Golden Age speech in DQ 1.11, where our knight forced SP to sit beside him. Note also how SP praises the “hidalgo host” of
his story, who has since died: “may his soul rest in peace, for he’s dead now, and people tell me that all signs indicated that he
died like an angel.” We might ask ourselves: Has some aspect of DQ died? Note how SP claims that his story is not out of place: “And
there you have my story, and in truth I believe that it has not been told here without purpose.” The irony is that SP has consciously
constructed a story that criticizes his master’s arrogance. Finally, the narrator’s description of DQ’s shame hints at race: “Don Quijote
turned a thousand different colors, which all flashed and shifted like marble over his dark skin.”
Extending the conflict between squire and knight, the Duchess now enquires about Dulcinea. DQ says that he has found her, but she
is now “enchanted and transformed into the ugliest peasant girl that one could imagine.” Embodying his own egalitarian lesson to
his master, SP takes the radically opposite view, appealing to the Duchess for support: “I don’t know... it seems to me she’s the most
beautiful creature on earth... by my faith, lady Duchess, she leaps from the ground onto an ass as if she were a cat.” He goes even
further, discrediting his master’s claim that Dulcinea is enchanted: “She’s as enchanted as my father!”
Chapter thirty-one concludes with the ecclesiastic expressing his disapproval of both the Duke and DQ. The backdrop is a complex
web of social relations: a priest, a pair of nobles, an hidalgo, and a laborer. Literary critics tend to take a negative view of the ecclesiastic,
especially modern critics who sympathize with DQ, whom the ecclesiastic calls “simple soul.” Nevertheless, we have heard his advice
before, from SP and from DQ’s niece. Anticipating the anti-colonialist message of Voltaire’s Candide, the ecclesiastic even embeds a
quote within his speech to DQ, telling him what others should say to him: “Return to your home and care for your children, if you
have any, and tend to your estate, and stop wandering about the world gaping at the wind and provoking the laughter of all
who know you and all who don’t.” This infuriates DQ, who, “with a furious glance and an agitated face, stood up and said...” But
here we have yet another interruption to be continued in the next chapter.

37
Chapter 30 - 31
review

38
The encounter with the Duke and Duchess contains deep social
conflicts. Cervantes’s perspectivism is not just a matter of producing
a more realistic narrative but, rather, of displaying the ethical or
ideological contradictions of his characters, contradictions that often
reveal these characters as hypocrites. In this way Cervantes’s art
indicates the convoluted nature of social relations: the narrator criticizes
the ecclesiastic, but the ecclesiastic also criticizes DQ, who criticizes SP,
who criticizes Doña Rodríguez, etc. And the process works in reverse as
well: SP forgets his own humble origins and goes too far in his criticism
of Doña Rodríguez; but then he communicates the same lesson to DQ,
who has lost his way by becoming an arrogant courtly knight. And what
is the role of the Duchess in all this? She seems to be on the side of the
less fortunate, the underdog, SP, especially when DQ tries to dismiss his
squire as a clown. Does a woman have a natural understanding of what
it feels like to be dismissed as a social inferior?
Let’s review

“Have mercy,
Cid,yelongest
of beards!”
—Anonymous,
Poema de mio Cid

40
LESSON13
Don Quijote’s
response to the
ecclesiastic
C
hapter thirty-two evolves in several phases: DQ’s response to the chaplain, the humiliation experienced by DQ when the
Duke’s servants wash his beard, a discussion of Dulcinea’s attributes and her enchanted state, and a concluding farce when
the servants attempt to wash SP’s beard. The focus on beards parallels the focus on social tensions because taking hold of
a man’s beard was a serious offense in the medieval and early modern periods. But the intervening focus on Dulcinea suggests that
beards are also phallic symbols of masculine potency as per Freud.
DQ’s response to the chaplain recalls his response to the canon of Toledo in part one. He claims to be in a kind of battle with the
ecclesiastic, “from whom one might have expected sound advice before vulgar vituperations,” and he accuses him of having
overstepped his bounds: “far beyond the limits of a proper reprimand.” DQ hints that his own profession is nobler than that of the
cleric: “By chance is it a futile undertaking or time ill-spent to wander the world, not seeking its riches but, rather, the asperous
means by which the virtuous rise to the seat of immortality?” As he did in his speech on arms and letters, DQ contrasts his decision
to follow the harsher path in life –“the narrow path of knight errantry”– with the softer lifestyle of clerics. He even claims that his
love for Dulcinea is above reproach: “I am a lover, if only because it is obligatory that knights errant be so; and being so, I am not
like carnally inclined lovers but am of the Platonic, continent variety.” Finally, DQ claims moral superiority: “my intentions I always
direct toward virtuous ends.”
Chapter32

Like the book burning episode, the Adventure of the Dead Body, and DQ’s penance in the Sierra Morena in part one, this passage
indicates Cervantes’s objections to religious orthodoxy. Nevertheless, notice that when SP endorses his master’s response to the
ecclesiastic, he highlights his own self-interest and desire for political power: “God willing; and may both he and I live long, such
that he’ll not lack empires to command nor I isles to govern.” This is the darker side of chivalric fantasy, which a cleric might
rightly criticize. And underscoring the conflict between the cleric and DQ, now the Duke fulfills SP’s deepest desire: “I grant you the
governorship of one of many that I have, and one of no small caliber.” Either way we read it, this is a climax in the overall narrative.
DQ even orders SP to kiss the Duke’s feet. Now the indignant ecclesiastic departs. But is his “impertinent choler” really so off the mark?
DQ then reflects on the exchange with the cleric, concluding that he has not been offended. The Duke agrees: “just as women
cannot offer insults, so ecclesiastics cannot offer insults.” To say the least, for nobles to treat a representative of the Church in this
fashion would have been problematic during the Counter-Reformation. Finally, DQ takes the secular-religious conflict to yet another
level by marveling at his own restraint, hypothesizing that if the cleric had offended Amadís or some other knight-errant, “I am certain
it would not have gone well for his grace.” And SP echoes the point, calling the cleric a “little man”: “a hacking they would have
given him, which would have opened him up from top to bottom like a pomegranate, or else a very ripe melon.” This is brutal
irreverence.

LESSON14
Don Quijote’s
humiliation
N
ow we have the washing of DQ’s beard. Perhaps poetic justice for his irreverence
toward the cleric, now it’s DQ’s turn to be humiliated. DQ submits because he thinks
it is an Aragonese custom, “believing that it must be a custom of that country.”
The Duke’s servants put so much lather on DQ’s face and beard that when they pretend to run
out of water, the knight must remain motionless with his eyes closed and his neck extended.
There is also a touch of race or class difference here, for his complexion appears “more than
moderately brown.” Note also that DQ’s humiliation results from the independent initiative of
the servants. The Duke and Duchess vacillate between “anger and laughter” and do not know
whether to punish or reward their servants: “they did not know how to proceed: whether to
castigate the damsels for their daring or to reward them for the pleasure they received
from seeing Don Quijote in that situation.” This relates back to DQ’s ongoing post-feudal
conflict with SP.
SP is particularly shocked by the humiliation of his master, although, ironically, he also
recognizes that his own beard is filthy and that he could use a washing himself. The Duchess
orders “the butler” to take SP away to wash his beard. She then appears to change the topic
by asking DQ to describe “the beauty and features of Lady Dulcinea.” In an hilarious echo of
Durandarte’s fate in the Cave of Montesinos, as well as a hyperbolic version of the Neoplatonic
theory of love found in Garcilaso de la Vega’s fifth sonnet, DQ says that he wishes he could remove
his heart and place it on the table, “so that Your Excellency might see her portrayed there
in detail.” He then extends this absurdity by observing that the great artists and rhetoricians
of Greek and Latin Antiquity, such as Apelles and Cicero, should also occupy themselves with
Dulcinea’s portrait.
“so that Your Excellency
might see her portrayed
there in detail”

43
After reaching these heights regarding Dulcinea’s perfection, DQ then descends back to reality when he reports his recent
disillusionment at El Toboso. Notice again how Cervantes’s humor relies on a tactic of excess. He accumulates a mildly comical point
until it becomes unbearable and awkwardly funny again: “I found her enchanted and converted from princess into peasant, from
beautiful to ugly, from angel into devil, from sweet to pestilent, from eloquent to rustic, from graceful to uneasy, from light
into darkness, and, finally, from Dulcinea of Toboso into a lowly farm girl from Sayago.” When the Duke asks who has transformed
Dulcinea, DQ makes his usual recourse to wizards. But notice how the wizards are now a race: “Who else could it be but some evil
enchanter from among the many who envy and pursue me? That accursed race, born into the world to tarnish and destroy the
deeds of the good and to elevate and brighten the workings of the wicked.” Which race might this be? Finally, DQ portrays himself
once again as the modern Romantic hero: “to take from an errant knight his beloved is to remove the eyes with which he sees
and the sun by which he is enlightened and the sustenance by which he lives... a knight errant without a beloved is like a tree
without leaves, a building without a foundation, and a shadow without a body to cast it.” Another amazing aspect of Cervantes’s
prose is that he combines pathos and bathos, i.e., heartbreaking tenderness and laughable satire, like few authors before or since.
Who else could it be but some evil
enchanter from among the many
who envy and pursue me?

44
O
nce again, the Duchess takes the initiative. She recalls that, according to what she has read, DQ has never met Dulcinea: “it
is known, if I don’t remember wrong, that your grace has never seen Lady Dulcinea, and that she does not exist in the
world but is a fantastical damsel, one that your grace engendered and gave birth to in your imagination, and painted
her with all the graces and perfections that you wished.” DQ now becomes as contradictory as ever. First, he admits that “God
only knows if there is a Dulcinea in the world or not, or whether she is fantastical or not fantastical”; but then he reverts to his
antiquated vision of Dulcinea as highborn and pure-blooded: “high in lineage, because in the company of good blood, the splendor
and power of beauty attains more degrees of perfection than in lowborn beauties.” Not surprisingly, the Duchess endorses the
spirit of DQ’s loyalty to his beloved, but, referring to SP’s testimony that he saw Dulcinea threshing buckwheat instead of pure grain,
she questions the idea that the Tobosan woman is a model of blood purity: “which makes me doubt the highness of her lineage.”
This leads DQ to voice another convoluted and contradictory disquisition on the lives of knights-errant. He doubts SP’s testimony
–“I have already stated that wheat was neither buckwheat nor wheat itself but grains of oriental pearls”– and he compares
Dulcinea to Helen of Troy and La Cava of Spain. The last comparison, of course, casts aspersions on Dulcinea’s purity. The overarching
problem here remains the fact that El Toboso was populated by Moriscos, and so DQ’s efforts at redeeming Dulcinea are ridiculous.
And once again, as readers our problem is how to navigate the irony. Is DQ insane in an overtly negative sense for rejecting Dulcinea’s
impurity? Or is he insane in a more subtle positive sense for refusing to be dissuaded from loving a Morisca?
Dulcinea’s
perfection
LESSON15

45
Adding to this social complexity, DQ now qualifies his opinion of SP by
insisting that, although the squire has defects, he would not trade him for any
other squire in the world. Nevertheless, at the end of his speech, DQ vacillates
over whether or not SP will make a good governor: “I am in doubt as to
whether it is right to send him to the governorship that your highness has
granted him, although I do see in him a certain capacity for governing.”
Note the cynicism when DQ takes a final jab at all rulers everywhere: “we know
well from many experiences that neither much talent nor much education
are necessary to be a governor.”
As if on cue, SP now reappears, interrupting DQ’s speech. Here we twice
read the word “rogue,” or pícaro in Spanish, reinforcing the idea that both SP’s
merit and his ethnicity are at issue. The squire runs into the dining hall trying to
escape having his beard washed with dirty water by servants who are intent on
playing another prank. Notice the social significance of SP’s concern: “there’s
not so much difference between me and my master, such that they should
wash him with the water of angels and me with the bleach of devils.” Once
again, the Duchess comes to SP’s rescue, accusing the servants of going too far.
Notice how she uses a pun to portray these tricksters as overly orthodox: “you,
ministers of cleanliness, you have gone too far and been negligent.” SP
kneels before the Duchess to show his gratitude and she responds by promising
that she will “make sure that my lord the Duke, as soon as he possibly can,
keeps his promise to grant you the governorship.”Cervantes has constructed
the entire episode in order to mock the notion of “blood purity.” Remember
that Old Christians used “blood purity” to keep people of converso or Morisco
lineage out of positions of power. And remember that this policy even seems to
have kept Cervantes himself from obtaining sinecures in the New World.
Is DQ insane in an
overtly negative sense
for rejecting Dulcinea’s
impurity?

46
LESSON16
I
n chapter thirty-three, DQ has left to take a “siesta” and SP passes the time in the company of the Duchess and her retinue of
“maidens and duennas.” It’s a fascinating scene that offers intimate access to the thoughts of SP as well as those of the Duchess.
It also contains political lessons. The Duchess insists that SP take a seat of honor at her side. She then gives SP a trial run at
governing, and he presides like a medieval Spanish hero over a court of women: “she told him to be seated like a governor and to
speak like a squire, given that for both roles he deserved the ivory throne of El Cid Ruy Díaz Campeador.” Is this mockery of our
misogynistic squire? Or is there a deeper, more feminist message here about the need for humility against the excesses of power? Keep
in mind that the Cid was essentially King of Valencia and that, upon his death, his wife Ximena assumed the throne. So the metaphorical
politics of the novel continue to allude to the dynamics of the Morisco question.
When the Duchess challenges SP regarding his lie to DQ about his embassy to see Dulcinea during his master’s penance in the Sierra
Morena, SP confesses the truth. After checking behind the room’s wall hangings for spies, SP reveals that he considers his master to
be a “complete madman” and “an idiot.” He also brags about his more recent embassy to El Toboso by which he has convinced DQ
that Dulcinea is enchanted. At this point the Duchess expresses her doubts about SP’s ability to govern by way of a veiled reference
to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. If SP knows his master is insane and yet still serves him, then the squire has proven himself unable to
govern himself, and thus “how will he know how to govern others?” Amazingly, the Duchess reports her doubts by quoting an inner
voice that speaks to her. This narrative structure of mise-en-abyme, or a kind of “Russian doll” arrangement, signals that the Duchess is
adept at a complex game of discursive frames. By this alone, she is, like Camila in the 1605 novel, one of the most complex characters
in the entire novel.
Chapter33
Sancho and
the Duchess

47
And the Duchess’s complexity grows. SP soon yields to her power, for she gets him to confess that he truly admires DQ –“I love
him much”– and that he is loyal and even indebted to him: “he gave me his donkeys.” SP even appears prepared to renounce his
governorship, arguing that politics corrupts the soul: “And if your highness should not wish that I be granted the promised
governorship... it might be that not granting me it will redound in favor of my conscience... and it might even be that Sancho
the squire will sooner go to heaven than Sancho the governor.” The squire recovers by insisting that all people are the same. He
does this via a series of refrains that range from a general, racial equivalency –“by night all cats are brown”– to something much more
politically specific: “the prince travels the same narrow path as the day laborer, and the pope’s body needs no larger grave than
the sacristan’s.” SP concludes this socially leveling speech by referring to a famous legend of medieval Spain according to which King
Rodrigo was eaten by snakes. Notice how SP has descended into a castration nightmare. Doña Rodríguez delights at this, citing the
“Ballad of the Penitence of King Rodrigo”: “Now they’re biting me, they’re biting me now, / right where I’m most sinful.” Recall that
DQ has recently compared Dulcinea to La Cava, the woman raped by King Rodrigo, an act for which he was punished not only by having
his penis eaten snakes but by losing Spain to the Moors.
With SP reduced, figuratively knocked off his throne, now the Duchess, like a Médici Queen, takes full control of the conversation.
First, she marks herself as the key to SP’s rise in status. She assures SP that her husband “will keep his word regarding the promised
isle” and she counsels him to not to discriminate among his subjects: “What I charge him with is to take care in governing his
vassals, remembering that all of them are loyal and wellborn.” This is serious moral advice in contrast to SP’s diabolical Micomicón
fantasy. Finally, with subtle reasoning, the Duchess turns the tables on SP by inverting his trick on his master. She insists that it was
actually the squire who was fooled by enchanters: “I take it as certain and more than verified that what Sancho imagined to be his
idea of tricking his master and making him think that the peasant girl was Dulcinea... was all for its part the idea of one of the
great enchanters who pursue Don Quijote... Because really and truly, and from good sources, I have it that the peasant girl who
made the leap onto the donkey was and is Dulcinea of Toboso, and that our good Sancho, thinking himself the trickster, is the
tricked... and when we least expect it we will see her in her proper form, and then Sancho will awaken from the illusion in which
he lives.”
Remember the significance of SP’s intermittent ass in relation to the Micomicón plot in part one? After SP accepts the Duchess’s
vision of life as an infinitely complex illusion, the chapter ends with SP kissing the Duchess’s hands and urging her to take care of his ass:
“and he implored her to do him the favor of taking good care of his gray, because he was the light of his eyes.” SP then recalls his
conflict with Doña Rodríguez over the care of his rucio as well as a certain unnamed misogynistic hidalgo in his home town: “Oh, Lord
have mercy, and how bad off with these ladies once was a certain hidalgo of my town!” In a shocking transgression of decorum,
the Duchess promises to take excessive care of SP’s ass: “I will value him more than the pupils of my own eyes.” Finally, the Duchess
even suggests that SP take his ass with him to his island. The squire agrees, taking a final swipe at those who govern: “for I have seen
more than two asses go into government, and so taking mine would not be anything new.”

48
Chapter 32 - 33
review

49
In chapter thirty-two of part two of DQ, the ecclesiastic’s harsh moral
attitude against chivalric fantasy seems vanquished when the Duke grants
SP governorship over an island. This underscores SP’s rule as something more
than a comical joke. Rather, Cervantes uses the retreating ecclesiastic in
order to prod his readers to evaluate secular power. Is the ecclesiastic unfair?
Or are his concerns well-founded? More amazing still, in this same chapter
and the next, Cervantes weaves together the themes of political authority
and feminism. Male anxieties about beards and ongoing questions about
SP’s ability to govern are juxtaposed by more ironic allusions to Dulcinea’s
impurity and by the sophisticated female perspective on power voiced by
the Duchess. Notice also how Doña Rodríguez, with whom SP previously
argued, takes particular delight in the story about a snake eating the penis
of Rodrigo, Spain’s last Visigothic king. In other words, the pre-Freudian
symbolism of the Renaissance is funny but it also signals meaningful social
conflict. Modern readers tend to giggle about sexual allusions in Literature.
This is fine, so long as it does not become dismissive, especially in the case
of the greatest novel of all time. It is no accident that SP’s worries about
the fates of beards and penises coincides with the news that he will soon
govern an island. Finally, we note again that Cervantes maintains the
Apuleian theme of the ass when the possibility of SP’s reign coincides with
his renewed interest in the well-being of his rucio. After all, as we saw in “The
Braying Episode,” the political leader of a nation is nothing but an ass.
Let’s review

“I would
prefer not to.”
—Herman Melville,
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

51
I
n chapter thirty-four, the Duke and Duchess play more elaborate tricks
on SP and DQ. They take them on an afternoon hunting trip with political
overtones: “with a retinue of beaters and hunters that would rival those
of a crowned king.” The hunt tests our heroes’ bravery. Then, when the hunting
party spends the night in the woods, the Duke and Duchess subject our heroes to
another act of chivalric theater marked by the novel’s third and final appearance
of Dulcinea. The narrator tells us that these “jokes,” which manifest “the inklings
and appearances of adventures,” are modeled by the nobles as extensions of the
Adventure of the Cave of Montesinos, “about which Don Quijote had already told
them.” This is odd because it was SP, not DQ, who had informed them about what
his master saw in the cave.
The Duke and Duchess offer our heroes hunting outfits. DQ refuses, but SP
accepts a tunic made of fine green cloth. The narrator tells us that the squire does
this for selfish reasons: “intending to sell it at the first opportunity he could.”
Note how SP’s green outfit recalls that of the moderate hidalgo Diego de Miranda,
although the squire’s greediness and cowardice are contrastive. Another interesting
detail about the episode is that SP insists on taking his “gray,” because “he did
not want to leave it even though they offered him a horse.” Similarly, when the
hunt starts, everyone dismounts except for SP: “Sancho followed from behind the
others, without dismounting his gray, whom he would not leave unattended
for fear that something might happen to it.”
The Duke and
Duchess play some
elaborate tricks
LESSON17Chapter34

Like a modern Diana, the Duchess plays a lead role in the hunt. She is the first to dismount and take up her position with a sharp
javelin at the edge of the woods. The trackers and dogs chase an “enormous wild boar” out of the woods, which the hunting party kills.
Again, the narrator stresses the Duchess’s urge to hunt: “she would have preceded all the others if her husband had not stopped
her.” In contrast, now SP actually does abandon his ass: “upon seeing the valiant animal, he abandoned his gray and ran as fast
as he could.” The squire gets hung up in an oak tree and has to be rescued by DQ. Two important details: first, SP rips his green tunic,
which upsets him greatly; second, his betrayal of his ass contrasts the fact that, for its part, the animal does not abandon him. The
original Arabic narrator finds this worthy of commentary: “Cide Hamete claims that on very few occasions did he ever see Sancho
Panza without his gray, or the gray without Sancho: such was the amity and good faith that they cultivated between them.”
Despite Cervantes’s multidirectional ironies, the general tone here is anti-monarchical. The “powerful boar,” symbolic of a tyrant (cf.
Shakespeare’s Richard III), is placed atop another of the novel’s many beasts of burden, another “supply mule” or acémila in Spanish,
and carried back to camp “as a sign of the spoils of victory.” Similarly, when SP complains about his torn tunic, he cites a slanderous
text that refers to a Visigothic king killed by a bear. SP then argues that hunting big game is too dangerous for princes, adding that the
practice is unjust: “for it involves killing an animal that has committed no crime at all.” But the Duke defends hunting in political
terms: “the practice of hunting big game is more appropriate and necessary for kings and princes than any other.” He even cites
Xenophon, the classical originator of the idea: “Hunting is an image of war.” If hunting is a metaphor for war, then war against whom?
SP says he prefers playing cards. For his part, DQ is annoyed by his squire’s impertinence: “Your graces should ignore this idiot, my
lords, for he will grind your souls.”

53
N
ow the chapter changes focus: three giant carts arrive led by the Devil, who announces that Montesinos seeks DQ with
information about how to disenchant Dulcinea. This happens as night closes in. Blinding lights and sounds of drums and
trumpets terrify everyone. War is again the theme, and now there is a racial touch: “suddenly, there were heard infinite
lelilíes in the manner of the Moors when they enter into battle.” When a messenger arrives dressed like the Devil, the Duke’s
questions reinforce the theme: “Who are you? Where are you going? And what warring people are these who seem to be crossing
through these woods?”
The Devil, the second one we have met in part two, responds that he seeks DQ, that more troops will arrive, and that Dulcinea will
follow “on a triumphant cart” and in the company of “the gallant Frenchman Montesinos” who will explain “how the lady is to be
disenchanted.” A comical detail here: the Devil does not recognize DQ and the Duke has to point him out. The Devil then swears by
God and his conscience that he was distracted. At this, SP produces an astonishing comment that highlights the problem of religious
orthodoxy: “Without a doubt... this demon must be a good Christian man, because if he were not, he would not swear ‘by God
and my conscience.’ As I see it now, even in the depths of Hell there must be good people.” Like the narrator’s observation that
good books were burned by the mock Inquisition in part one, SP ironically locates good people in hell. In fact, he observes that the
Devil himself might be such a person. Again, like the disguised characters now traipsing before us, Cervantes’s constant weaving of
comedy and complicated plotlines cloaks serious points. SP’s proposition is radical in a period of religious wars among Protestants,
Catholics, Muslims, and a range of pagans in the New World and Africa. Idle reader, what if the Devil is good?
The third and final
appearance of Dulcinea
LESSON18

When the Devil approaches DQ, he adopts a position contrary to Cide Hamete’s praise for our hero’s challenge to the lions in DQ 2.17:
“To you, Knight of the Lions (and may I see you in their claws) I have been sent by the disgraced but valiant knight Montesinos.”
He announces once again the arrival of Dulcinea and departs after making another morally complex jab at DQ that relates him to the
Duke and Duchess: “may demons like me be with you, and may good angels be with these lords.” Note also that DQ and SP are both
shocked by this confirmation of the knight’s vision in the Cave of Montesinos. As they await Montesinos, SP expresses fear: “I’ll no more
wait here than I’ll wait in Flanders”; DQ expresses courage: “I’ll wait here intrepid and solid, even if all Hell should charge me.”
Recall that Catholics and Protestants were fighting over Flanders.
Again, sounds of war fill the woods in all directions: “from all four corners of the woods were simultaneously heard four clashes
or battles.” The narrator is specific about the sounds: artillery, shotguns, soldiers, and “in the distance there echoed the lililíes of the
Hagarenes,” i.e., the soldiers are “Muslims,” by way of a reference to Hagar, the female slave of Abraham who gave birth to his first son
Ishmael, the patriarch of Islam. The spectacle so frightens SP that he faints into the skirts of the Duchess, who revives him by throwing
water in his face. Next come three carts dragged by four oxen covered in black cloth and with great wax torches tied to their horns. Each
cart is ridden by an old wizard accompanied by pairs of devils. All are dressed in black. Finally, a fourth cart approaches, but instead of
sounds of war, we hear “the sound of soft and harmonious music.” SP takes this as a hopeful sign: “where there’s music, there can
be nothing bad.” The Duchess agrees, adding that lights bring clarity. At this, SP, hinting at Inquisitional torture, becomes doubtful
again: “although it could be that they burn us.”
“I’ll wait here intrepid
and solid, even if all Hell
should charge me”

Don Quijote's Journey to an Inn

Don Quijote's Journey to an Inn

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