Note: The original title of the novel the Nobel Institute voted the "greatest book of all time" was El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. (Ingenioso means quick or inventive.)

PART I (1905)
Prologue: This opens by calling the following book: "A child born, after all, in prison where every discomfort has its seat and every dismal sound its habitation". The actual circumstances of the conception and writing of Don Quixote is unknown and had led to much speculation. Cervantes also writes: "... although I seem like Don Quixote's father, I am his stepfather". (The explanation for this cryptic remark does not come until the end of Chapter VIII.) The prologue concludes by quoting advice from a "friend":

All that has to be done is to make the best use of imitation in what one writes; ... And since this work of yours is only concerned to destroy the authority and influence that books of chivalry enjoy in the world and among the general public ... using expressive, decorous and well-ordered words in a straightforward way, to write sentences that are both harmonious and witty ... . In short, always have as your aim the demolition of the ill-founded fabric of these books of chivalry, despised by so many and praised by many more ... .

Then follow a number of poems including sonnets adressed to Don Quixote by Amadís of Gaul and Orlando, The Lady Oriana (wife of Amadís) to Dulcinea del Toboso, Amadís's squire to Sancho Panza, and even one to the horse Rocinante.

Chapters I - VIII: In a village in La Mancha, the name of which the writer can not recall, lived the hidalgo Alonso Quijana (or Quixada or Quesada, etc., he is not sure of the this name either but will call him Quijada because of his jawbone). who collected and read books of chivalry to the neglect of everything else, including sleep and food. He sold land to buy more books and argued with his friends, the village priest and the barber about the merits of various knights. He thought the Knight of Burning Sword (the fictional Amadís) was greater than the historic El Cid. Finally he became deranged and decided to become a knight errant himself. Cleaning his old armor and naming his old nag Rocinante, he named himself Don Quixote de la Mancha. To be his lady-love he picked a good-looking peasant girl from a nearby village named Aldonza Lorenzo whom he had never met, thinking of her as the high-born Lady Dulcinea del Toboso.

Don Quixote set off alone on his first sally but had no adventures all that day. Finally he saw an old inn which he took for a castle, and he imagined the two slovenly women there as fine ladies and the salt cod he ate as a fine trout. This all pleased him, but he was bothered because he had never been knighted and begged the innkeeper, as lord of the castle to do it for him. He kept vigil in the inn yard, fought with muleteers, had his sword girded back on by one of the "maidens", and was knighted. As he left the inn to look for more adventures, the innkeeper told him he needed a squire. In a confrontation with some merchants, he was unhorsed when Rocinante tripped and fell. Wounded he returned home, thus ending the first sally.

In Chapter VI the priest and the barber went through Don Quixote's books, determined to remove the source of his madness. Several, including Amadís of Gaul, Palmerin of England, and Galatea, they removed from the library because of their bad influence on their friend, but saved them because of their intrinsic value. However, most were given to the housekeeper to burn. The author refers to the process as an auto-da-fé of the books.

Don Quixote recovered from his wound and set off on his second sally accompanied by his squire, a local farmer Sancho Panza, whom he lures by promises of adventure and the governorship of an island as his reward. Their first encounter was the famous battle with the windmill. (This takes merely one page of the book's nearly 1,000 pages.)

He next met two friars whom he took for enchanters and was in the middle of a fight with them when the action abruptly stops. "The author of this history leaves the battle unfinished saying he hasn't found any more written of the exploits of Don Quixote but hopes to find more papers." This ends the first section of Part I. Who is this author? Up until this time the reader has assumed it has been Cervantes writing. Was it some other other party? We are left hanging for several more chapters. Note that Cervantes does not take credit for the authorship in the book as he does in Man of La Mancha.

Chapter IX-LII
The second section of Part I covers the three weeks of the knight's second sally. The adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza form a framework within which many other characters relate their adventures. (Note: Don Quixote's madness was confined to his function as a knight errant; in other matters he held rational and well informed conversations, and he acted in a normal manner.) Cervantes continued his search for more on Don Quixote and tells how he met a boy on a street in Toledo carrying notebooks and papers written in Arabic. Realizing they contained more on the knight, he contacted a Moor to make a translation to Castilian Spanish. (It will later be revealed that the original had been written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, a Moorish historian.) Once the translation has been prepared, Cervantes edits its Spanish to create the final book. Thus Cervantes removes himself as the creator and from responsibility for the facts, leaving himself free to make editorial comments.

One of his many adventures concerns a barber (not the one from Don Quixote's village but the one in Man of La Mancha) and the helmet of Mambrino. Mambrino was a fictional Moorish king featured in a number of the chivalric romances. He had a gold helmet which kept its wearer from harm. Man of La Mancha tells the story much as it is in the novel.

The long Captive's Tale (Chapters XXXIX-XLI) is generally accepted as reflecting many of the experiences of Cervantes himself while he was a captive in Algers. It is thought that it was written many years previous to the novel and later inserted into it. The captive had served at the Battle of Lepanto and was later captured by Algerian corsairs and shut up in a bagño. He became a slave of the Bey Hassán and classed as a ransomable captive. Hassán was extremely cruel, and the only one to escape his punishment was a Spaniard named Saavedra (i.e. Cervantes). The escape plan is described in detail and contains elements of Cervantes's own. Chapter XXXIII tells the story of Lothario, adapted from Ariosto's Orlando furioso, which gave another word to the languages of the world.

The priest and the barber from his village finally managed to capture Don Quixote while he was asleep, shut him in a cage and took him back to his village. Here Cervantes steps in, writing that the original author couldn't find any more information about a third sally. He believes he went to Saragossa and took part in some famous jousts, but there is no information about how he met his end. He did acquire a casket containing various poems about Don Quixote including some epitaphs which were written by the "Academicians of Argamasilla, a village in La Mancha". This ends Part I.

Note: Before Cervantes could finish his own Part II, a spurious sequel appeared. However, Cervantes did not know of it until he was well into his own version. Thus, in the beginning of his Part II, the knight sets off for Saragossa, but when he learns of the other book, changes his goal to Barcelona.

PART II (1915)
Part II is more philosophical than Part I which had tended toward farce. Click here for more on this.

Chapter I is written by Cervantes who continues by quoting Cide Hamete Benengeli. "Don Quixote" had been brought home and taken care of by his niece and his housekeeper, and showed signs of returning to sanity. However, after a month the priest and barber were allowed to visit him and found him still thinking he was a knight errant. Then Sancho forced his way in to see him; he was still waiting for his island governorship. He had started to believe it all, but he also pointed out that, as a mere hidalgo, Alonso Quijana had no right to call himself Don. He then told of a Sansón Carrasco a young graduate from the University of Salamanca, who had reported on the appearance of a book about Don Quixote's exploits which everyone is reading (n.b. the original Part I). Sancho went off to fetch him. The others questioned him on how the Arabic version could be accurate since Cide was a Moor, and all Moors are deceivers, liars, and story-tellers. Carrasco then blessed the man who took care to have it translated into Castilian (i.e. Cervantes), saying it was a history not poetry and therefore tells the truth. History is sacred because it must be truthful. However, he did criticize it because it incorporated stories which had nothing to do with the deeds of Don Quixote himself, and he blamed the many mistakes and inconsistencies on the printers, not the author.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza decided to go on another sally (the third) to Saragossa for the St. George's day jousts so the knight could demonstrate his prowess. Among the things that happened on this trip were:

Don Quixote went in search of Dulcinea and Sancho showed him a coarse peasant girl whom he claimed was Dulcinea. This time the knight saw her as she really was rather than thinking she was a lady, but Sancho convinced him she was enchanted.

They set off for Saragossa and met a troupe of traveling players. They then met the Knight of the Spangles (Mirrors) and his squire. Don Quixote defeated this knight who turned out to be Sansón Carrasco in disguise. He had hoped to capture Don Quixote and take him home for his own good.

Sancho realized Don Quixote was mad but said he was sometimes rational. He felt obliged to follow him because they were from the same village, he had fed him and he liked him. He finally got his "island", Barataria, governed it well and wisely, but then decided to return to his position as knight's squire. .

After finding out about the false Part II of his adventures, Don Quixote decided to go to Barcelona instead of Saragossa. There he visited a printing house and saw them correcting a copy of the false novel. He met The Knight of the White Moon (again Carrasco in disguise), jousted with him, was defeated and promised to return home for a full year. He intended to keep this vow as the shepherd Quixotiz with Sancho as Panzino. However, he became ill, the doctor felt he was dying, he confessed his sins, and he made his will. He realized he was no longer Don Quixote but Alonso Quijano and declared Amadís and the others were now his enemies. He begged the forgiveness of the spurious author for having given him something to write all the lies about.

Cervantes talking: "This was the end of the Ingenious Hidalgo of La Mancha, the name of whose village Cide ... couldn't quite recall, so that all the towns and villages of La Mancha could fight among themselves for the right to adopt him and make him their own son, just as the seven cities of Greece contended for Homer". Then he quotes Cide: "For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him ... we two are as one. ... My only desire has been to make men hate those false, absurd histories in books of chivalry, which thanks to the exploits of my real Don Quixote are even now tottering, and without any doubt will soon tumble to the ground".

Hidalgos are gentlemen but not entitled to the honorific "Don" of the tru nobility. They are exempt from taxes but some (such as Cervantes) were not landowners. To earn the title, one needed to prove all four grandparents were from this class. The word comes from the old Spanish fijo de also or "son of something".

Jawbone: Is this a reference to the well-known prominent Hapsburg chin?

El Cid was Rodrigo (Ruy) Diaz de Vivas (1044-1099) an early Spanish hero. There is a statue of him in front of the art museum in San Diego's Balboa Park.

Aldonza is mentioned in Don Quixote but does not appear in person. She is an actual character in the play-within-a-play of Man of La Mancha

Galatea was an earlier work by Cervantes himself.

Moor: To understand this seemingly callous remark one must understand the historic context. While many Moors started to leave Spain after the expulsion of the Jews under Ferdinand and Isabella, they were not forced to leave until 1609 (between the publication of Parts I and II of Don Quixote when feelings against them were running very high. Thus while Cervantes could engage a Moor to translate Part I, their image had changed by the time this conversation was taking place.

The name Barataria in Don Quixote later entered the language as the name of a town in Louisiana; the base Barataria Bay of the pirate Jean Lafitte; a town in Trinidad and Tobago

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Revised September 2007
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.