The Figure of Don Quixote
Don Quixote, the central figure of the mighty satire which gave its death-blow to chivalry, is perhaps typical of the romance reader of Cervantes’ day. Crack-brained and imaginative to the verge of madness, he is entirely lost to the uses of everyday existence. He lives in a world of his own, and has nothing in common with that of his time, to the spirit of which he cannot adapt himself. In this gentleman of La Mancha the vices of the imagination are well portrayed, but they are unaccompanied by those gifts through which imagination can be rendered of utility to the community. Don Quixote dwells on the heights of a chivalric Parnassus, a land of magic peopled by the spectres and shadows which he has encountered in the books with which his library is so well furnished. His imagination is thus not even creative, but derivative; reliance upon the “idols he has loved so long” has “done his credit in men’s eyes much wrong,” and he is regarded by his neighbours as an amiable lunatic of no importance. But the dreamer, when roused to action, can be a very terrible person if his visions chance to direct him astray, and if he attempt to realize a nightmare. Thus it was with Don Quixote. Scarcely mad enough for confinement, but yet sufficiently crazy to become a public nuisance, if not a public menace, he justly typifies the kind of person in whom romance runs mad, and is thus of the same class as the small boy who is incited to acts of petty larceny by the perusal of detective stories, or the young lady behind the ribbon-counter who is under the impression that she is the long-lost daughter of a mysterious peer.
It is symptomatic of such craziness that it craves companionship. It is indeed a species of vanity which must have an audience, however small or however unsuited to its purposes. Again, the element of conspiracy is as the apple of its eye, and it must confide its ideas and aspirations to one sympathetic ear at least. In Sancho Panza, Don Quixote finds a strange confidant. The luckless peasant is completely unable to comprehend his master’s point of view, but is carried away by his rodomontades and the glib and gorgeous promises of preferment and prosperity which the crack-brained knight holds out to him. To his participation in the wild scheme of the visionary Don, Sancho’s shrewd spouse violently objects, but when dreamer and dunce get together common sense may hold its tongue and content itself with the knowledge that it is not until windmills have been tilted at and sound trouncings have been received that its advice will be listened to.
But though he begins his travels as a dunce, Sancho by no means remains one. He profits from his experiences, and almost every page shows him increasing in judgment and in that humour which is the salt of good judgment. As his master grows madder, Sancho grows wiser, until at last he becomes capable of direction and guidance toward the rueful knight. As we proceed we begin to suspect that the peasant-squire exists as a kind of chorus to illustrate the excesses of his master and criticize his absurdities. But apart altogether from Don Quixote, Sancho Panza is a striking and arresting figure in modern fiction, possessing a philosophy of his own, rich in worldly wisdom and abounding with practical ability. On the humorous side he is equal to Falstaff, only whereas Falstaff’s humour is typically English that of Sancho Panza is universal. He is a world-clown, with the outlook of a philosopher and the unconscious humour of a Handy Andy.
The Adventure at the Inn
The true measure of the character of Don Quixote is perhaps met with in that chapter which recounts what occurred to him in the inn which he took for a castle. The place seems to have been a very ordinary Spanish posada. The host and hostess were kindly folk whom the knight at once exalted to the rank of a castellan and châtelaine, and in the dowdy maidservant, who has been immortalized under the name of Maritornes, he saw a great lady who dwelt in their company. After the terrible trouncing he had received from the Yanguesian carriers the wretched knight was glad to rest his battered limbs in a miserable garret of the place, while Sancho explained to the inn-folk the nature of a knight-errant and the vicissitudes of errantry, which one day compelled its adherents to undergo such hardship as the Don now suffered from, and the next exalted them to the heights of sovereignty over many empires. These explanations were seconded by the Knight of the Rueful Countenance himself, who, sitting up in bed, entertained the hostess and maidservant to a speech so grandiloquent that, lost in wonder at his eloquence, “they admired him as a man of another world.” But Don Quixote, anxious to recover from his injuries, begged his squire to procure from “the governor of the castle” the ingredients of a magical balm of which he had read in some book of chivalry. These he obtained, and Don Quixote busied himself by concocting the enchanted liquor over the fire, saying over it many credos and paternosters. Then he drank deeply of the awful compound, with distressing effect, and Sancho, following his example, underwent a similar but more violent experience, and was assured by his master that the balsam disagreed with him because he had not received the order of knighthood!
Saddling his horse, the knight was about to proceed on his journey, but before he set out he assured “the lord governor of the castle” how deeply grateful he was for the honours he had received while under his roof. The innkeeper suggested that the time for paying his reckoning had come, but Don Quixote retorted that it was impossible for him to do so, as no knight-errant of whom he had ever read was wont to pay for board and lodging. The innkeeper protested loudly, whereupon, clapping spurs to Rozinante, the knight rode out at the gate. The innkeeper then attempted to extort his dues from Sancho Panza, but without avail, as the squire quoted the same authorities as his master, whereupon some of those who sojourned at the inn seized him and tossed him in a blanket. Don Quixote, hearing his cries, rode back, but although he stormed loudly the travellers still continued to toss Sancho in the blanket, until at length, tired of the exercise, they let him go.