the power-struggle between don quixote and sancho: four crises in the development of the narrative

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The Power-Struggle between DonQuixote and Sancho: Four Crises in theDevelopment of the NarrativeEdwin Williamson aa University of OxfordPublished online: 03 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Edwin Williamson (2007) The Power-Struggle between Don Quixote and Sancho:Four Crises in the Development of the Narrative, Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies andResearches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America, 84:7, 837-858, DOI: 10.1080/14753820701560436

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The Power-Struggle between DonQuixote and Sancho: Four Crises inthe Development of the Narrative

EDWIN WILLIAMSON

University of Oxford

There have been countless studies of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, bothas individual characters in their own right and in relation to each other,but these have concentrated, as a rule, on specific aspects of theprotagonists’ interaction or on particular episodes in the novel, and few,if any, have attempted to analyse the development of their relationship overthe entire course of the narrative. The most notable exception was Salvadorde Madariaga, who attributed this general lack of consistent analysis of thenovel’s central relationship to the deeply entrenched tendency in Quixotecriticism to regard the protagonists as symbolic representations ofantithetical values. Madariaga set out to demonstrate that once ‘freedfrom the rigidity which has simplified them with two antithetical andsymmetrical characters, Don Quixote and Sancho [ . . .] take on the life-likeand human mobility which they inherit from their most human father andcreator’.1 Nevertheless, his own attempt to give a more dynamic account didnot entirely overcome the antithetical symmetry that had oversimplified, inhis view, the relationship between the protagonists, for his interpretationrested upon the notion of a process of mutual influence by which Sancho’sspirit rises from reality to illusion, while Don Quixote’s descends fromillusion to reality, a process he famously described in Spanish as the‘quijotizacion’ of Sancho and the ‘sanchificacion’ of Don Quixote. AndMadariaga, moreover, retained a highly sentimental notion of the madknight and his squire, writing of ‘the fraternity of soul which unites thisstrange master and this singular servant’, a bond he encapsulated asfollows: ‘The same sap flows through their actions, the same spiritinterpenetrates them, and so they grow gradually nearer, attractingeach other by virtue of a slow and sure mutual influence which is, in

1 Salvador de Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology (Oxford:Oxford U. P., 1966 [1st ed. 1934]), 137. Originally published in Spanish as Guıa del lector del‘Quijote’: ensayo psicologico sobre el ‘Quijote’ (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1926).

ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/07/07/000837-22# Bulletin of Spanish Studies. DOI 10.1080/14753820701560436

Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume LXXXIV, Number 7, 2007

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its inspiration and its development, the great charm and achievement ofthe book’.2

Madariaga was by no means unique, however, for in some degree orother the sentimentalization of the protagonists, either individually orjointly, is so pervasive in Quixote criticism as to be virtually ubiquitous.The sentimental idea of Don Quixote is, without a doubt, a consequence ofthe so-called ‘Romantic approach’ to the novel, for if one portrays the madknight as a noble idealist or a man of almost saintly goodness then it makessense to see him as a benevolent father-figure towards Sancho.3 But,curiously, even the so-called ‘hard’ critics*those who believe thatCervantes’ fundamental purpose was the comic chastisement of DonQuixote’s folly*have themselves shown a tendency to sentimentalize, ifnot the knight, then certainly his squire, for so keen have they been to behard on the poor madman that they have gone rather soft on Sancho,overlooking some of his more unpleasant qualities and portraying him asthe embodiment of healthy, down-to-earth common sense and even as amoral corrective to his master.4 In my view, these tendencies tosentimentalize either Don Quixote or Sancho, or both, disguise the realthrust of the narrative and attenuate the far harsher and more thoroughlysubversive comic vision that Cervantes eventually produced, especiallytowards the end of Part Two.

There can be no doubt that Cervantes conceived of the Quixote , firstand foremost, as a funny book, and certainly the starting point for anyinterpretation of the novel has to be the author’s repeatedly statedintention to parody the books of chivalry: ‘derribar la maquinamalfundada de estos caballerescos libros’ (‘Prologo’, 19).5 But this funnybook is far from static: it goes through successive phases, moods andtransformations. For instance, the story of Don Quixote begins with theadventures of a single protagonist, but Cervantes takes the mad knightback to his home village (Chapter 5) and provides him with a companion(Chapter 7). This creative decision was to have immense consequences, forwhen Sancho Panza appears on the scene, Don Quixote will be forced toengage in a dialogue with another character in order to explain his ideas

2 Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology , 136, 137.3 A. J. Close has studied this sentimentalization of the knight in The Romantic

Approach to ‘Don Quixote ’ (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1978), and has sought to combat thistendency in his subsequent writings.

4 See A. A. Parker, ‘El concepto de la verdad en Don Quijote ’, RFE , 32 (1948), 287�304;Oscar Mandel, ‘The Function of the Norm in Don Quixote ’, Modern Philology , 55 (1957), 154�63; P. E. Russell, ‘Don Quixote as a Funny Book’, MLR , 64 (1969), 312�26; and A. J. Close‘Sancho Panza, Wise Fool’, MLR , 68 (1973), 344�57.

5 All page numbers refer to Don Quijote de la Mancha , Edicion del Instituto Cervantesdirigida por Francisco Rico, 2 vols (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg. Cırculo de Lectores/Centropara la Edicion de los Clasicos Espanoles, 2005).

838 BSS, LXXXIV (2007) EDWIN WILLIAMSON

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and justify his actions, and this will affect the development of his owncharacter and, in turn, that of Sancho.

The dialectic between knight and squire was, indeed, to become thevery life-blood of the Quixote , but it resulted in such a varied andmultifaceted literary phenomenon that it has defied sustained criticalanalysis. Nevertheless, I will argue that the relationship between theprotagonists is best characterized as a power-struggle, and that onceperceived as such it becomes possible to identify certain crises whichadvance the narrative at strategic junctures. There are four such crisesin the Quixote : (i) the Fulling Mills episode in I. 20, (ii) the enchantmentof Dulcinea in II.10, (iii) Merlin’s prophecy in II. 35, (iv) Sancho’s fightwith Don Quixote in II. 60. I regard these episodes as crises becausethey are turning-points which change irreversibly the relations betweenQuixote and Sancho; and these crises are not arbitrary because theyarise from the very nature of the interaction between master andservant, and each represents a logical progression in the unfolding of theirrelationship.

When he set out to parody the books of chivalry Cervantes wasembarking on a journey of discovery whose trajectory and finaldestination would have been quite unforeseeable, for it seems unarguablethat the Quixote was not written to a pre-conceived plan but was rather theproduct of inspired improvisation and constant revision. Writing theQuixote , in my view, was an adventure in itself for Cervantes, as hetried to work out ways of developing his initial idea, constantly facingcreative decisions and having to invent solutions to problems of compositionalong the way. Indeed, Cervantes’ journey of discovery was to lead him intostrange, uncharted territory that not only coaxed a new form of writing intobeing but also led the author to transgress the bounds of the politicalideology of his day.

1 The Fulling Mills Episode, Part I, Chapter 20

The invention of Sancho Panza must have posed a problem of motivationfor Cervantes*why would a peasant like Sancho wish to leave his wifeand family to take up service with a man of such extravagant notionsas Don Quixote? One reason lies in his desire to rise in the world andgain some material reward, particularly the island which the knightpromises him. There is also the matter of his ignorance: Sanchois uneducated and has little understanding of chivalry, so he is preparedto serve Don Quixote because the gentleman is his social superior andmust know what he is doing, or so Sancho assumes. Social deference,then, as much as material self-interest, forms part of Sancho’s initialmotivation.

THE POWER-STRUGGLE BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO 839

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However, Sancho’s function in relation to Don Quixote is intrinsicallysubversive, in the sense that his point of view must inevitably be at oddswith that of the madman, and this disparity of perspectives will becomically reinforced and enriched by disparities of language, manners,values, attitudes and temperament between the two men.6 Thesedisparities will generate a good deal of merry play and innocentknockabout but there is a point in Part One when the merry playthreatens to become something more challenging, and it is this episode, Ibelieve, which represents the first crisis in the novel.7

While wandering in the wilderness at nightfall, knight and squirehear some tremendous noises which are so alarming that not onlyis Sancho frightened but even Don Quixote himself. Yet the knightsoon pulls himself together and as he prepares to charge off into thedarkness in order to discover the cause of the noise, he launches into a heroicspeech:

Sancho amigo, has de saber que yo nacı por querer del cielo en esta edadde hierro para resucitar en ella la de oro, o la dorada, como suelellamarse. Yo soy aquel para quien estan guardados los peligros, lasgrandes hazanas, los valerosos hechos. Yo soy, digo otra vez, quien ha deresucitar los de la Tabla Redonda, los Doce de Francia y los Nueve de laFama . . . (I.20, 227)

Sancho is paralysed with fear: he dare not accompany the knight butneither can he face being left on his own in the dark. At first he tries to

6 Gonzalo Torrente Ballester saw that Sancho is not just a ‘coadyuvante’ of DonQuixote’s but also an ‘oponente’: ‘a) en cuanto su vision correcta de la realidad le lleva adesbaratar y rectificar constantemente las transformaciones de Don Quijote (‘‘no son gigantes,son molinos; no son ejercitos, son ovejas etc.’’) y b), en cuanto jugador tramposo, pues si bien escierto que entra en el juego de Don Quijote lo es tambien que ‘‘lo engana’’ ’ (El Quijote comojuego [Madrid: Guadarrama, 1975], 96�97). But I will argue that in Part II Sancho’sopposition goes well beyond a game.

7 Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1968), and The Dialogic Imagination , trans. Caryl Emerson and MichaelHolquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press) have inspired a considerable body of Quixotecriticism which sees Sancho as a subversive, ‘carnivalesque’ element in the narrative. SeeManuel Duran, ‘El Quijote a traves del prisma de Mikhail Bakhtin: carnaval, disfraces,escatologıa y locura’, in Cervantes and the Renaissance , ed. Michael McGaha (Easton, PA:Juan de la Cuesta, 1980), 71�86; Elias L. Rivers, ‘El principio dialogico del Quijote ’, LaTorre (nueva epoca), 2 (1988), 7�21; James Parr, Don Quixote: An Anatomy of SubversiveDiscourse (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1988); Laura J. Gorfkle, Discovering the Comic in‘Don Quixote’ (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993); Augustin Redondo, Otramanera de leer el ‘Quijote’ (Madrid: Castalia, 1998); and James Iffland, De fiestas yaguafiestas: risa, locura y ideologıa en Cervantes y Avellaneda (Madrid: Iberoamericana,1999). While broadly in sympathy with this approach, I see the relations between theprotagonists more specifically as an evolving struggle for power and I am attempting here toanalyse the particular stages of this contest.


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persuade his master to await the dawn but seeing that words are to noavail, he resorts to trickery and ties Rocinante’s hind legs so that whenthe knight tries to charge, all he can do is hop up and down on his horse.The canny peasant now hits on the perfect chivalric explanation for hismaster’s immobility, declaring that Rocinante cannot move because it is thewill of Heaven, and Don Quixote, who is always so sensitive to his owndestiny as a knight errant, swallows the lie.

At daybreak, when they discover that the noise was caused by fullingmills, Sancho can hardly contain his laughter*in fact, Don Quixote himselfis moved to laugh at the irony of the situation, and Sancho, seeing thateven his master is amused, is emboldened to parody the heroic speech theknight had declaimed as he was about to embark on the frighteningadventure: ‘Has de saber, ¡oh Sancho amigo!, que yo nacı por querer delcielo en esta nuestra edad de hierro para resucitar en ella la dorada, o deoro. Yo soy aquel para quien estan guardados los peligros, las hazanasgrandes, los valerosos fechos . . .’ (I.20, 239). Don Quixote, however, isoutraged by Sancho’s parody: ‘Viendo, pues, don Quijote que Sancho hacıaburla del, se corrio y enojo en tanta manera, que alzo el lanzon y le asentodos palos, tales, que si como los recibio en las espaldas los recibiera en lacabeza, quedara libre de pagarle el salario, si no fuera a sus herederos’(I.20, 240).

Why is the knight so angry? In the first place, because Sancho is notconforming to chivalric stereotype: ‘En cuantos libros de caballerıas heleıdo, que son infinitos, jamas he hallado que ningun escudero hablasetanto con su senor como tu con el tuyo’ (I.20, 241). But more interestinglyfor our present purpose, he sees Sancho’s mockery as a threat to his statusand authority: ‘Es menester hacer diferencia de amo a mozo, de senor acriado y de caballero a escudero [ . . .] desde hoy en adelante, nos hemos detratar con mas respeto’ (I.20, 242). Sancho’s mimicry of heroism hasthreatened the social hierarchy implicit in the relationship betweenknight and squire. Sancho, however, shows no inclination to defy hismaster and soon accepts his authority once more, promising not to speak toDon Quixote unless he is spoken to: ‘Mas bien puede estar seguro que deaquı adelante no despliegue mis labios para hacer donaire de las cosas devuestra merced, si no fuere para honrarle, como a mi amo y senor natural’(I.20, 242).

Cervantes’ use of the term ‘senor natural’ indicates that he has sensedthe underlying political character of the relationship between the madknight and his squire at the Fulling Mills episode. The term ‘senor natural’was employed in medieval and early-modern Spain to describe therelationship between a lord over his vassals, including the king over hissubjects, with a view to distinguishing the legitimate authority exercised bya ‘natural lord’, who ruled with the consent and in the interests of hissubordinates, from the power of a tyrant, who ruled by force and entirely in


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his own interest.8 So, if the squire’s mockery of his ‘senor natural’ had beenallowed to go unchecked at this point, Cervantes would have had to face thepossibility that Sancho’s comic subversiveness might acquire thecharacteristics of a rebellion against a natural lord, and therefore pose anovert challenge to the established order. But, as we have seen, the momentof crisis passes when Sancho gives his consent to submit to the authority ofDon Quixote as his legitimate master.

Still, Sancho’s subversive potential is an indispensable factor in keepingthe narrative going, in the sense that Don Quixote actually needs his servantto lie to him if he is to persevere in his absurd mission to restore the world ofchivalry. In fact, it is the knight who unwittingly forces Sancho to lie asecond time when in Chapter 25 he orders the squire to deliver a letter to thelady Dulcinea in El Toboso. Sancho never actually visits El Toboso, but inChapter 31 he returns to Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena and invents astory about an interview he has had with Dulcinea, assuring the knight thathis lady has accepted his love service. Don Quixote is overjoyed, since this isthe best evidence he has had so far that his mission to restore the world ofchivalry is succeeding, and Sancho’s reassuring lie about Dulcinea’sfavourable response would explain why he is so irrepressibly optimistic forthe rest of Part One, to the point where he is even capable of putting apositive gloss on his being trussed up in a cage and conveyed to his homevillage by the priest and barber.

The next logical step in the narrative would have been for Don Quixote tovisit his lady in person and establish direct contact with her, but othercircumstances intervene to make the knight postpone this decision: he agreesto succour the Princess Micomicona before going to see Dulcinea at ElToboso, and this determination is itself interrupted by the varied goings-onat the inn, and by his being diverted back to his home-village by the priestand barber. This postponement in Chapter 31 of Don Quixote’s visit to ElToboso suggests that Cervantes chose not to develop the logic of therelationship between the protagonists beyond a certain point in Part One.

8 For a history of this term, see Robert S. Chamberlain, ‘The Concept of ‘‘senor natural’’As Revealed by Castilian Law and Administrative Documents’, HAHR , 19 (1939), 130�37. Theterm was revitalized in the course of the sixteenth century as a result of the problems ofsovereignty arising from the conquest of indigenous peoples in America, but it was used bySpanish political thinkers well into the seventeenth century, as in, for instance, Diego deSaavedra Fajardo’s Idea de un prıncipe polıtico-cristiano (1640�1642): ‘Esta diferencia hayentre el senor natural y el tirano en la imposicion de tributos. Este, como violento poseedor,que teme perder presto el reino, procura disfrutalle mientras se le deja gozar la violencia. [ . . .]Pero el prıncipe natural considera la justificacion de la causa, la cantidad y el tiempo que pidela necesidad, y la proporcion de las haciendas y de las personas en el repartimiento de tributos,y trata su reino, no como cuerpo que ha de fenecer con sus dıas, sino como quien ha de durar ensus sucesores, reconociendo que los prıncipes son mortales y eterno el reino’ (see EmpresaLXVII in Saavedra Fajardo, Empresas polıticas, ed. Sagrario Lopez [Madrid: Catedra, 1999],765�66).


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He has allowed Sancho to lie twice to his master and, as the Fulling Millsepisode suggests, he has sensed the political implications of these lies, butalthough Sancho’s lies may be necessary in order to keep the novel going,they also pose a problem, for the more he lies, the more power he will haveover Don Quixote. Thus, his second lie in Chapter 31 about his visit toDulcinea is more substantial than the earlier one at the Fulling Millsbecause it goes right to the heart of the knight’s enterprise, given that thetransformation of the village girl Aldonza Lorenzo into the princess Dulcineais vital to the success of the restoration of chivalry. And, not surprisingly,Sancho is more manipulative on this second occasion, relishing his new-found ability to play with Don Quixote’s expectations as he answers hismaster’s excited questions about Dulcinea’s appearance and conduct. Asthe relationship develops, therefore, there is an increasing danger that thesquire will eventually gain enough knowledge to see through the knight’sillusions and either destroy them or else simply go back home.

The problem for Cervantes must have been to determine how far Sanchocould continue to deceive his master without his acquiring so much powerover him that it became entirely implausible that he should wish to remain inthe service of a madman. Cervantes, in fact, chose to contain the threat posedby Sancho’s growing power. Both of the squire’s lies are laced with fear:‘Ya estaba cansado de mentir tanto y temıa no le cogiese su amo a palabras;porque, puesto que el sabıa que Dulcinea era una labradora del Toboso, no lahabıa visto en toda su vida’ (I.31, 398�99). And so long as Sancho is in fear ofDon Quixote he will never lose his habit of deference and never challenge hismaster’s authority. As a result, the central relationship remains at the levelof comic interplay for the rest of Part One, a series of amusing exchangesbetween an endearingly deluded madman and a country bumpkin.

The brake Cervantes placed on the development of the protagonists’relationship may explain the observations about the organization of PartOne made by Cide Hamete Benengeli, the author’s intermediary, in theopening paragraph of Part Two, Chapter 44. He complains about having toconfine himself to speaking through the mouths of the two main characters,which he finds a ‘trabajo incomportable’ that justified, in his view, thedecision to allay the monotony of such a procedure by interpolating anumber of extraneous stories in Part One (II.44, 1069�70). Theseinterpolated tales, in fact, are woven into the main narrative in anumber of ingenious ways that reproduce the interplay between illusionand reality which is the basic theme of the novel.9 Indeed, the first part ofDon Quixote is a marvellous Baroque composition of ever more complexvariations on the contrasts between story and history, verisimilitude andthe marvellous, but the fact remains that it lacks organic unity, as

9 I have analysed the thematic and structural characteristics of Cervantes’interpolations in ‘Romance and Realism in the Interpolated Stories of the Quixote ’,Cervantes, 2 (1982), 43�67.


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Cervantes himself was to acknowledge through Cide Hamete in Part Two,Chapter 44, and the fundamental reason for this disjointedness, I wouldargue, was that the author failed to develop the logic of the Quixote-Sanchorelationship beyond the point reached at the crisis of the Fulling Mills inChapter 20, and later reinforced by Sancho’s lie over his visit to Dulcineain Chapter 31. As a result, the narrative action was deprived of its centraldynamic purpose and Cervantes had to resort to other devices, such as theuse of interpolated tales, in order to expand his novel.

Don Quixote, Part One, then, is a case of arrested development, ofstalled narrative logic, but when Cervantes came to write a sequel he triedto adhere to a new narrative principle based on the criterion of relevance tothe ‘truth’ of the events in the main narrative, or so he tells us in Part Two:‘Y, ası, en esta segunda parte no quiso ingerir novelas sueltas ni pegadizas,sino algunos episodios que lo pareciesen, nacidos de los mesmos sucesos quela verdad ofrece’ (II.44, 1070). In observing this new principle, however,Cervantes would have had little choice but to develop the logic of theQuixote-Sancho relationship. It is no surprise, therefore, that the action ofPart Two is set in motion through a second crisis between knight andsquire which Cervantes contrived by taking up the thread he had lefthanging in Part One, Chapter 31, when Don Quixote decided to postponehis visit to Dulcinea in order to help the Princess Micomicona. This secondcrisis would knit the squire’s two successive lies in Chapters 20 and 31 intoa story-line involving the relationship between Don Quixote, his putativelady Dulcinea, and Sancho Panza, thus giving the narrative the unifyingpurpose that it had been lacking, and driving it forward into unchartedterritory once more.

2 The Enchantment of Dulcinea, Part II, Chapter 10

Don Quixote’s decision to visit El Toboso in order to pay his respects toDulcinea will inevitably produce a crisis because the chivalric lady does not,of course, exist and Sancho’s claim to have had an audience with her was atotal fabrication. For a third time, therefore, the squire will be forced to tella lie in order to get himself out of a tight corner, but, unlike in Part One, he isno longer in fear of Don Quixote; indeed, he is so self-confident by now, sosure that he knows how to fool his master, that he feels able to pull off anamazingly daring and clever trick:

No sera muy difıcil hacerle creer que una labradora, la primera que metopare por aquı, es la senora Dulcinea; y cuando el no lo crea, jurare yo, ysi el jurare, tornare yo a jurar, y si porfiare, porfiare yo mas, y de maneraque tengo de tener la mıa siempre sobre el hito, venga lo que viniere.(II.10, 767)


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Sancho thus wilfully deceives Don Quixote into thinking that three uncouthpeasant girls on donkeys who happen to be riding by are none other than thelady Dulcinea and her maidservants.

For Madariaga this episode was the crux of the novel, ‘that saddest ofadventures, one of the cruellest in the book’, where the rise of Sancho’s spirittowards illusion crossed with the corresponding decline of Don Quixote’stowards reality.10 Eric Auerbach, too, believed that this episode ‘holds aspecial place’ in the narrative, among other reasons because, like Madariaga,he saw it as pivotal for Don Quixote, ‘the climax of his illusion anddisillusionment’; but it was special also because ‘for the first time the rolesappear exchanged’: until this point it was Don Quixote who transformedeveryday reality in terms of the romances of chivalry, while Sancho tried tocontradict him, yet now it is the other way round*Sancho improvises a sceneafter the fashion of chivalric romance whereas Don Quixote can see only anuncouth peasant girl before him. Auerbach, however, did not take hisanalysis of the relationship beyond this episode, which he saw as having thepotential to become a tragic crisis but which nevertheless remained, in hisview, ‘a farce, and a farce which is overwhelmingly comic’. According toAuerbach, Cervantes’ intention was ‘to present the world as play’, and thefunction of Don Quixote’s madness was to spread a ‘neutral gaiety’ overeverything that came in contact with it.11

However, if we pursue our analysis of the protagonists’ relationshipbeyond the episode of the enchantment of Dulcinea, we shall appreciate thatin Part Two there is far more to Cervantes’ representation of thecontemporary world than gaiety and merry play.12 To begin with, theenchantment of Dulcinea effects a critical shift in power from master toservant: not only does Sancho pretend to have gained the power his masterclaimed to possess in Part One, professing to see chivalric phenomenainstead of everyday appearances, he clearly derives great enjoyment fromthis new-found power, describing with cruel relish the lady Dulcinea in allher finery and beauty, a sight he knows poor Don Quixote has been denied.And Don Quixote, for his part, is all too aware of this shift of power to his

10 Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology , 145.11 Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature , trans.

Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974 [1st ed. 1946]), 339, 357.12 Against Auerbach’s interpretation, I argue in ‘ ‘‘Intencion’’ and ‘‘Invencion’’ in the

Quixote ’, Cervantes , 8 (1988), 7�22, that this episode does in fact present two of the threeelements of a complex tragic crisis as analysed by Aristotle, inasmuch as it entails ananagnorisis (Don Quixote’s discovery that Aldonza Lorenzo has not been transformed intoDulcinea, but into a foul peasant instead), which produces a peripeteia (the reversal of theknight’s fortunes for the rest of Part Two). This crisis is, of course, subsumed within the largercomic purpose of Cervantes’ parody but it none the less progressively darkens the mood of thecomedy in the Second Part. For a discussion of this change of comic key in Part Two, see mybook, The Half-Way House of Fiction: ‘Don Quixote’ and Arthurian Romance (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1984), 170�202 and 212�14.


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servant. He is blind, as he puts it, to his lady’s beauty: ‘Porque te hago saber,Sancho, que cuando llegue a subir a Dulcinea sobre su hacanea, segun tudices, que a mı me parecio borrica, me dio un olor de ajos crudos, que meencalabrino y atosigo el alma’ (II.10, 773). But, additionally, it is theenchantment of Dulcinea which converts the relations between master andservant into the power-struggle that was latent in Part One since the crisis atthe Fulling Mills.13 Henceforward, Don Quixote’s overriding concern will beto find the means of disenchanting his lady, whereas Sancho will do his bestto avoid being found out, while at the same time trying to advance the careerof his master so that he might eventually gain the promised island. And it isprecisely this power-struggle that will provide the narrative in Part Two withthe principle of unity that Cervantes had been seeking: the subsequentadventures of knight and squire will have a bearing on the central questionof the lady’s enchantment, a question which each character has to resolve inhis particular way if he is to fulfil his goal in life.

This unifying principle is not the only literary advantage that Cervantesderived from the second crisis; it also develops the character of each of theprotagonists. Don Quixote undergoes a distinct reversal of fortunes, andwe can observe a sea-change in his role as a comic figure: after the discoverythat Dulcinea has been enchanted, the mad knight is plunged into misery,and his morale will enter into an irreversible decline. Sancho, too, willchange: he will lose his inbred deference, now that he is aware of his ability tomanipulate his master with such striking success. And Sancho’s lies will, ofcourse, compromise him morally, so that his bad faith towards Don Quixotewill steadily grow and eventually result in outright disloyalty and evencynicism, all of which contradicts, as we shall see, the notion of an enduringfraternal bond between the protagonists.

Indeed, so powerful has this second crisis made Sancho that he would becapable of breaking Don Quixote altogether if he chose to, either by revealinghis lies to his master or by simply refusing to serve a madman any longer andtaking himself off home. Cervantes, once again, had to find a way of putting abrake on Sancho’s rise to power if he was to proceed with the narrative at all.But what kind of brake? In Part One it was social deference, now it becomesself-interest*Sancho still wants to gain an island, and he is still sufficientlyrespectful of Don Quixote’s superior education to half-believe that his masterwill somehow be capable of delivering one to him. The result is that the

13 Peter N. Dunn sees the central relationship in terms of a contest for power but in amuch wider sense: Don Quixote ‘fruitlessly contests the world of the others’, namely, ‘theworld of the modern state and its instruments’, a world in which ‘Sancho has claimed hismodern share’ (‘Contested Discourses in Don Quijote , Part Two’, in Cervantes: Essays inMemory of E .C. Riley on the Quatercentenary of ‘Don Quijote’ , ed. Jeremy Robbins and EdwinWilliamson [London/New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2005], 87�100 [p. 99]). In hisview, ‘Sancho clearly achieves mastery in his ‘‘enchantment’’ of Dulcinea’, but I would arguethat this mastery is restrained by Cervantes until much later on in Part Two.


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power-struggle is contained by Sancho’s personal stake in the success of DonQuixote’s mission, and Cervantes will thereby endeavour to maintain arough balance of power between master and servant during the first half ofPart Two.14

This equalization of status becomes evident in the negotiation and deal-making that will tend to characterize relations between the protagonists. Themost obvious example is the debate between Quixote and Sancho over thetruth of the vision the knight claimed to have experienced in the Cave ofMontesinos. Don Quixote reproves Sancho:

Todas las cosas que tienen algo de dificultad te parecen imposibles; peroandara el tiempo, como otra vez he dicho, y yo te contare algunas de lasque alla abajo he visto, que te haran creer las que aquı he contado, cuyaverdad ni admite replica ni disputa. (II.23, 904)

The issue crops up again in the episode with Maese Pedro’s prophesying ape,when Sancho suggests to his master that he ask the ape if the experience inMontesinos’ Cave was true, and the knight replies: ‘Yo hare lo que meaconsejas, puesto que me ha de quedar un no se que de escrupulo’ (II.25, 922).And it continues as far into Part Two as the Clavileno adventure, when theknight still wants to strike a deal with the squire: ‘Sancho, pues vos quereisque se os crea lo que habeis visto en el cielo, yo quiero que vos me creais a mılo que vi en la cueva de Montesinos. Y no os digo mas’ (II.41, 1055).

Well before the Clavileno episode, however, and probably towards themiddle of Part Two, Cervantes faced a creative impasse, I believe: he couldnot maintain the balance of power between the protagonists for much longerwithout its becoming tedious for the reader. His recourse to interpolatedstories, such as Camacho’s Wedding (II.19�22) and the episode of the brayingvillagers (II.25 and 27�28), is a kind of partial regression to the narrativepractices of Part One, and an indication that the novel could have beenrunning out of steam. On the other hand, if he created a third crisis in orderto give renewed impetus to the basic narrative action, its logical outcomewould have been to allow Sancho Panza the upper hand over Don Quixote,and this could well have led to Sancho’s losing any lingering attachment tohis master and either destroying the knight’s illusions or else abandoninghim altogether. In Chapter 30 we can appreciate how close Cervantes mayhave come to breaking up the partnership and drawing his novel to an end.After the disastrous adventure with the Enchanted Boat on the River Ebro,Sancho decides to give up and go home when a suitable opportunity should

14 Madariaga noticed this equalization of the relationship after the ‘enchantment’ ofDulcinea: ‘It is no longer as before that of the Knight above over the squire below, but that ofthe influence now of Don Quixote on Sancho, now of Sancho on Don Quixote. In this phase thecurves of the spiritual evolution of master and man are intertwined’ (Don Quixote: AnIntroductory Essay in Psychology , 166).


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arise: ‘Bien se le alcanzaba que las acciones de su amo, todas o las mas, erandisparates, y buscaba ocasion de que, sin entrar en cuentas ni endespedimientos con su senor, un dıa se desgarrase y se fuese a su casa’(II.30, 955�56).

The only way out of the impasse, therefore, was to find some means ofincreasing Sancho’s power over his master without destroying theirrelationship altogether. In the event, Cervantes conceived a quite brilliantsolution to the problem. Not long after we are told of Sancho’s decision to quithis master’s service, the author introduced two new characters, the Duke andDuchess, both of whom have read Part One and wish to manipulate themadman for their own amusement. It is they who will fabricate the thirdcrisis, and this crisis will carry the power-struggle between master andservant to the next stage.

3 Merlin’s Prophecy, Part II, Chapter 35

The Duke and Duchess, as intelligent readers of Part One, have perceivedthat the crux of the Quixote-Sancho relationship is Dulcinea del Toboso.Furthermore, having discovered that Dulcinea has been ‘enchanted’, theycome up with the idea of empowering Sancho in relation to his master bypersuading the peasant that he, and not Don Quixote, has the virtue ofdisenchanting Dulcinea. But there is an obvious difficulty*how can Sanchobe persuaded of this notion if it was he who had ‘enchanted’ Dulcinea in thefirst place? Clearly, Sancho will have to be made to believe thatthe enchantment of Dulcinea has really taken place, instead of being a liewhich he had himself thought up in order to get out of the tight spot he hadbeen put in by his crazy master.

It is the Duchess who prepares the ground for the third crisis. In her longconversation with Sancho in Chapter 33, she pulls off the amazing feat ofpersuading him that he did not deceive Don Quixote, and that Dulcineareally and truly is enchanted. Sancho, who is still an ignorant peasant afterall, cannot bring himself to doubt the word of such an exalted lady, so muchso that he is prepared to reject his own certain knowledge of the matter inorder to accept her account of Dulcinea’s condition: ‘Todo debio de ser alreves, como vuesa merced, senora mıa, dice, porque de mi ruin ingenio no sepuede ni debe presumir que fabricase en un instante tan agudo embuste’(II.33, 993). It was deference to Don Quixote that got Sancho to venture intothe knight’s mad world in the first place, and it is deference again*but to theDuchess now*that prevents him from leaving it.

The third crisis between Quixote and Sancho thus comes about throughthe exercise of social power, genuine aristocratic power, which the Duchess ishappy to exploit in order to cast a kind of spell over a country bumpkin forher own amusement. Once Sancho has been suitably duped, the way is clearfor the Duke and Duchess to set up the hoax that will unleash the third crisis


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in the power-struggle between the mad knight and his squire. In chapter 35they have some of their servants dress up as famous wizards and magiciansfrom the books of chivalry and parade before the assembled household. Chiefof these figures is of course Merlin, who appears before an astonished DonQuixote with a make-believe Dulcinea in train, and declares that theunfortunate lady will be released from her enchantment only if Sanchoadministers 3,300 lashes on his backside. Given Sancho’s reluctance toimplement this remedy, Don Quixote tries to force him to whip himself:

Tomaros he yo [ . . .] don villano, harto de ajos, y amarraros he a un arbol,desnudo como vuestra madre os pario, y no digo yo tres mil y trecientos,sino seis mil y seiscientos azotes os dare, tan bien pegados, que no se oscaigan a tres mil y trecientos tirones. Y no me repliqueis palabra, que osarrancare el alma. (II.35, 1008)

The knight is behaving as if things had not changed at all since the first crisisat the Fulling Mills. But Merlin intervenes: ‘No ha de ser ası; porque losazotes que ha de recebir el buen Sancho han de ser por su voluntad, y no porfuerza, y en el tiempo que el quisiere . . .’ (II.35, 1009)

Why does this episode represent a crisis? Because it irrevocably alters therelations of power: up to that point in Part Two, Cervantes had balancedknight and squire, but when Merlin endows Sancho with the virtue ofdisenchanting Dulcinea, he establishes unequivocally Sancho’s superiorityover his master in the one matter that critically concerns Don Quixote. WhenSancho finally agrees to accept Merlin’s prescription, the knight, we are told,‘se colgo del cuello de Sancho, dandole mil besos en la frente y en las mejillas’(II.35, 1014). It is an ominous image of dependency which will be givensubstance in surprising ways in the chapters that follow, for we now enter anew phase in the Quixote in which the character of the leading protagonisthas become fundamentally passive and, having been deprived of his capacityto take the initiative, his basic function in the development of the action willbe reduced to pleading with Sancho to lash himself in order to releaseDulcinea from her enchanted state.

Having invented a device that will guarantee Don Quixote’s subservienceto Sancho, the Duke and Duchess decide to reinforce the superiority of theservant over his master by empowering Sancho still further. In the nextchapter, they invent another trick that will appear to reward Sancho withthe island that he had been promised by his master since the very startof their adventures in Part One: Sancho is made governor of the ‘island’ ofBarataria. The resulting transfer of power from master to servant nowbecomes so obvious that even Don Quixote himself has to acknowledge it, asin the passage in which he expresses surprise at Sancho’s good fortune:‘Infinitas gracias doy al cielo, Sancho amigo, de que antes y primero que yohaya encontrado con alguna buena dicha te haya salido a ti a recebir y aencontrar la buena ventura’ (II.42, 1058). And his unsolicited advice to


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Sancho on the principles of good government betrays envy of his servant, orat least his sense of injustice that this illiterate simpleton should have beenentrusted with the responsibilities of high office when he has himselfreceived nothing at all.15

By introducing the Duke and Duchess into the novel, Cervantes found ameans of carrying the logic of the Quixote-Sancho dynamic a stage furtherwithout destroying their partnership, as verisimilitude would otherwise haverequired. Even so, the narrative was sustained in these new circumstancesby dividing the action into two distinct and alternate strands*one devoted toSancho in Barataria, the other to Don Quixote back at the castle, pining forDulcinea and being tormented by the advances of the mischievous Altisidora.Yet, clearly, there was a limit to this procedure, for how long could thebusiness of Barataria be kept going, and how long would the reader endurethe tormenting of the beleaguered knight at the castle? And if theprotagonists were kept apart for too long, the novel would effectively splitin half and the central relationship would cease to function in any case. Onceagain, Cervantes had to invent a way of continuing the narrative or else drawit to a close. In the event, he chose to keep it going, and in the only waypossible*by reuniting Quixote and Sancho. However, this was bound to be atricky operation at this stage, for once reunited with his master, couldSancho be plausibly made to submit to Don Quixote’s authority, or would hissubversive spirit continue to undermine the mad knight? And if the latter,where would that then lead?

Cervantes’ decision at this point was to subordinate Sancho to DonQuixote, but this required that he take steps to re-build the knight’sauthority over his squire. The process gets underway in Chapter 53 whenSancho is relieved of his governorship, which is, after all, an elaborate hoaxplayed by the Duke. Cervantes represented Sancho’s giving up office as arenunciation of ambition, a spiritual insight which results in his accepting ahumble place in a social hierarchy fixed at birth: ‘Yo no nacı para sergobernador ni para defender ınsulas ni ciudades. [ . . .] Bien se esta cada unousando el oficio para que fue nacido’ (II.53, 1163). The next step was toarrange for Sancho to resume voluntarily his role as the mad knight’sservant. In Chapter 55, the ex-governor falls into an underground cave andcalls out for someone to rescue him. That person turns out to be Don Quixote,whose timely appearance Sancho interprets as a providential sign of the

15 Madariaga noted ‘a touch of shame-faced envy’ in Don Quixote, and ‘a certainharshness, a certain aggressiveness in the tone he uses towards his servant, the brand-newgovernor’ (Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology , 177, 178). And in a little-knownessay, Jorge Luis Borges was shocked by the knight’s attitude to Sancho: ‘¿No estainduciendonos aquı Miguel de Cervantes que palpemos envidia en el caracter honestısimode Don Quijote? ¿No es mas odiosa la sola insinuacion de esa envidia que esa otra obscenaaventura en que, tirado Don Quijote en el campo, cruza una piara de cerdos encima de el?’ (‘Laconducta novelıstica de Cervantes’, in El idioma de los argentinos [Buenos Aires: Seix Barral,1994 (1st ed. 1928)], 117�22 [p. 122]).


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knight’s superiority, and so he resolves to enter his service once again: ‘Mepaso al servicio de mi senor don Quijote, que, en fin, en el, aunque como elpan con sobresalto, hartome a lo menos’ (II.55, 1183). All of this is well andgood*Sancho has gained a moral victory over himself, having allegedlyperceived the vanity of power and ambition, and so he returns with somerelief to the lowly station in the social hierarchy that Heaven had ordainedfor him.

Not long after master and servant have been reunited, they take to theopen road once more, no doubt because Cervantes could not risk keepingthem in the castle for much longer without having them fall prey yet again tothe machinations of the Duke and Duchess. And even after they resume theirwanderings in Chapter 58, Cervantes continues the process of restoring DonQuixote’s authority. When they encounter the statues of the four Christianknights, Sancho marvels at his master’s wisdom: ‘Quedo Sancho de nuevo,como si jamas hubiera conocido a su senor, admirado de lo que sabıa’ (II.58,1198). In the same chapter, they come across two beautiful maidens dressedas shepherdesses, who are taking part in a pastoral pageant, and when theyare introduced to the other participants in this rarefied aristocratic pastime,the knight is welcomed into their company without a trace of mockery ordisrespect, in marked contrast to the treatment he had received at the handsof the Duke and Duchess.

Still, the ending of this pastoral episode reveals the creative difficultyCervantes faced after reuniting knight and squire. Don Quixote decides tothank his kind hosts for their hospitality by standing in the middle of theroyal highway for two whole days in order to challenge any passing knightto declare that, with the exception of Dulcinea, the two shepherdesses are thefairest maidens in the world. This chivalrous gesture, however, results in hisbeing horribly trampled by a herd of bulls. The episode shows that DonQuixote is still as mad as ever, and as long as the knight is mad, Cervanteswill have to make him look ridiculous, since the parody of the romances ofchivalry is the raison d’etre of the novel. And so, it will become increasinglydifficult to keep knight and squire together without allowing the basic logic ofthe parody to reassert itself, which means that sooner or later Sancho willhave to be portrayed once again as a subversive element in relation to themad fool who is his master. More specifically, Don Quixote’s trampling bybulls highlights the problem of Sancho’s motivation after Barataria. Whyshould he wish to serve an obvious madman? How long could he be expectedto tolerate Quixote’s absurd antics? Why does he not go home, as indeed hehad resolved to do in Chapter 30, just before they happened to meet theDuchess? There are, by now, no ideological, moral or personal restraints thatCervantes could place against the exercise of Sancho’s free will.

The truth is that, in purely literary terms, it was far too late to put theclock back to Part One. Despite the author’s attempts to re-build DonQuixote’s authority over Sancho after the Barataria experience, the dynamic


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created by the third crisis has not disappeared*the knight will still dependon his squire’s willingness to flog himself in order to release Dulcinea fromher spell*and Cervantes must eventually have decided that he had nooption but to allow the power-struggle to resume and play itself out to itsinevitable conclusion.

4 Sancho’s Final Triumph: The Fight with Don Quixote in Part II,Chapter 60

The fourth and last crisis in the novel occurs in Chapter 60, when DonQuixote and Sancho stop for the night on their way to Barcelona. Sancho goesto sleep but Don Quixote remains awake, troubled as he is by thoughts ofdisenchanting Dulcinea. After some time, he becomes so frustrated bySancho’s reluctance to carry out Merlin’s prescription that he rouses thesquire, pulls down his trousers, and tries to whip Sancho himself. However,the startled Sancho reacts by wrestling Don Quixote to the ground andplacing his knee on his master’s chest to hold him down. The knight ishorrified by this effrontery: ‘¿Como, traidor? ¿Contra tu amo y senor naturalte desmandas? ¿Con quien te da su pan te atreves?’ (II.60, 1220). But Sanchorefuses to accept his place in the social order: ‘Ni quito rey ni pongorey*respondio Sancho*, sino ayudome a mı, que soy mi senor’.

This extraordinary episode has elicited very little critical attention,perhaps because Cervantes scholars have found the reality it lays bare toopainful to contemplate and have averted their collective gaze.16 EvenMadariaga, who is one of the very few critics to have remarked on it, wasdeterred by its harshness from integrating it into his account of the novel’sdevelopment. And yet, despite briefly commenting on this episode inisolation, calling it ‘one page which every reader of Don Quixote wouldwish unwritten’, he sensed that it might have a larger significance in thenarrative:

This passage, hard enough in its substance, is rendered harder by thesomewhat perfunctory manner in which it is written, and the reader ispained to find that, after an event of so deep a significance, Cervantes canpass on to the next adventure, without the slightest development orcomment [ . . .] Yet it is too much in harmony with that curious animosity

16 Martın de Riquer passes over this episode entirely in his commentary on Chapter 60for the Rico edition of Don Quijote , focussing instead on Roque Guinart. In the bibliographicalinformation provided in both the ‘Lecturas’ section and the ‘Notas complementarias’ of theRico edition, only two items give some consideration to the political dimension of DonQuixote’s fight with Sancho, namely, Juan Bautista de Avalle-Arce, ‘Don Quijote, Sancho,Dulcinea: aproximaciones’, Crıtica Hispanica , 11 (1989), 53�67, and Mauricio Molho, ‘DonaSancha (Quijote II, 60)’, in Homenaje a Jose Manuel Blecua (Madrid: Gredos, 1983), 443�48.


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against Don Quixote, which now and then seems to harden Cervantes’pen, to be lightly dismissed as the result of hurried composition.17

Indeed, it should not be lightly dismissed, for there are intertextual signs tobe found here which suggest that Cervantes chose to communicate itsnarrative meaning implicitly to the reader, rather than by any overtdevelopment or comment.

Sancho’s reply to Don Quixote: ‘Ni quito rey ni pongo rey [ . . .] sinoayudome a mı, que soy mi senor’, echoes a famous phrase in Spanish legend,allegedly uttered by the French knight Beltran Duguesclın (also known asBeltran de Claquın) after the battle of Montiel, in which he fought alongsideEnrique of Trastamara against the latter’s brother, Pedro el Cruel, King ofCastile. After the battle, Duguesclın perfidiously lured the defeated Pedro tohis brother’s tent, where Enrique engaged him in a fight, and as the tworoyal brothers were wrestling on the ground, with Don Pedro lying on top ofDon Enrique, Duguesclın took Pedro’s foot and turned him over, therebyallowing Enrique to stab Pedro to death and inherit the crown of Castile.18

Duguesclın was said to have explained his intervention with the words: ‘Niquito ni pongo rey, pero ayudo a mi senor’. Sancho, however, gives thelegendary phrase a wholly unexpected twist; the lowly squire is notinterested in deposing or enthroning kings because he has come to regardhimself as his own lord: ‘Ayudome a mı, que soy mi senor’.

Sancho takes this insubordination against Don Quixote even further,presenting his master with an ultimatum:

Vuesa merced me prometa que se estara quedo, y no tratara de azotarmepor agora, que yo le dejare libre y desembarazado; donde no,

aquı moriras, traidor,enemigo de dona Sancha. (II.60, 1221)

Sancho is now quoting the last two verses of ‘A caza va don Rodrigo’, apopular ballad about another traitor, Don Rodrigo de Lara (or Ruy Velazquezde Lara), whose betrayal of his own nephews, the ‘siete infantes de Lara’,resulted in their deaths at the hands of the Moors. The words that Sanchoquotes are those hurled at Don Rodrigo by the knight, Mudarra Gonzalez,half-brother to the ‘siete infantes’, when he comes to seek vengeance on

17 Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology , 6 and 8, respectively.18 The account of this incident by Jeronimo Zurita brings out the treacherous political

ambitions that motivated this fratricidal struggle: ‘Estando [don Pedro] en aquella tienda enun instante entro el rey don Enrique y en viendole se abrazo con el con una daga en la mano, yfueron a tierra los dos hermanos como si no se pudiera determinar aquella porfıa ni quedarsegura la sucesion del reino sino al que habıa de tenir sus manos con la sangre del hermanovencido y muerto’(see Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon , ed. Angel Canellas Lopez[Zaragoza: Institucion ‘Fernando el Catolico’, CSIC, 1978], 590). I am grateful to ProfessorDavid Hook for directing me to this source.


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behalf of his stepmother, Dona Sancha de Lara, sister to the man who was atraitor to his own blood.

One might say that Sancho is merely recalling these lines because of thenear-coincidence of his own name and Dona Sancha’s, but, as in the case ofthe earlier quotation from the legend of Pedro el Cruel, the intertextualreference serves to point up the revolutionary difference between Cervantes’episode and the traditional ones alluded to by Sancho.19 In the latter, thevassal is expressing his loyalty to his lord or lady, but Sancho twists both ofhis quotations in such a way as to make them express the precise oppositeof the originals*not loyalty but disloyalty to Don Quixote. And even then,Sancho’s disloyalty is not the kind that follows a traditional pattern, such asthat of a vassal who switches allegiance from one lord to another, for theservant’s allegiance is to no-one but himself: ‘Soy mi senor’.

This brazen self-assertion is carried still further in Sancho’s secondquotation*to an alarming extreme indeed, for not only does he threaten tokill Don Quixote, he has the temerity to call the knight a ‘traidor’. Yet inwhat sense could Don Quixote have been a traitor to Sancho? In order toappreciate the full political significance of this fourth crisis, we should attendto yet another intertextual reference, but this time it is a reference to PartOne of the Quixote itself. The fallen knight’s outraged cry: ‘¿Como, traidor?¿Contra tu amo y senor natural te desmandas?’, carries distinct echoes ofSancho’s own words in the first crisis at the Fulling Mills, when he meeklypromised to honour Don Quixote, ‘como a mi amo y senor natural’ (I.20, 242).In this fourth crisis, therefore, we see Sancho withdrawing his consent to begoverned by the authority of Don Quixote: the pact between lord and vassalwhich was confirmed at the Fulling Mills has been broken, and the reason forthis is surely that by threatening his servant with physical harm for noreason other than to pursue his own personal interest in disenchantingDulcinea, Don Quixote has abused his power and is acting as a tyrant ratherthan a ‘senor natural’, to express it in contemporary political terms.

Things have come to quite a pass, with knight and squire accusing oneanother of being a ‘traidor’. And the outcome of the crisis is unexpectedlygrave, for it does not leave the contenders on an equal footing by any means;on the contrary, it leads to a terrible inversion of the hierarchicalrelationship, when Don Quixote, amazingly, yields to Sancho’s ultimatumand vows never to lay hands on him again: ‘Prometioselo don Quijote, y juropor vida de sus pensamientos no tocarle en el pelo de la ropa’ (II.60, 1221). Itis the master who swears obedience to the servant, and he does so in the mostabject way possible: ‘Juro por vida de sus pensamientos’, which is to say thathe swears by Dulcinea herself. Unbelievable as it may seem, Don Quixote

19 Molho sensed the political connotations of this episode but opted for a largelypsychoanalytical interpretation based on Sancho’s feminization of his name (‘Dona Sancha[Quijote II, 60]’).


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places his lady*the very source of his chivalric inspiration*at the mercy ofSancho Panza.

The defeat of Don Quixote by Sancho occurs at the very beginning ofChapter 60, just before the pair come across the Catalan bandit, RoqueQuinart, and his men. Its position in the narrative, therefore, makes the fightbetween the protagonists a kind of prelude to the episodes that follow inBarcelona. Nevertheless, Martın de Riquer, in his commentary on Chapter60 for the Francisco Rico edition of Don Quijote , makes no mention at all ofthis incident, though he does make a pertinent observation about theBarcelona episodes:

El lector advierte con cierta pena y con desilusion que Don Quijote seeclipsa, se apaga y se transforma en un mero espectador. [ . . .] Son, endefinitiva, paginas en que Don Quijote esta totalmente ausente; ha idodifuminandose y acabara borrandose del todo cuando en las galeras sevea inmerso en un combate naval que queda en simple escaramuza.

Riquer believes that the knight’s marginalization in Barcelona and thepalpable fading of ‘todo el ardor caballeresco’ to the point of virtual extinctionwhen he is defeated by the Caballero de la Blanca Luna in Chapter 64,confirms that ‘su locura es puramente intelectual o libresca y que la obra noes una satira del heroe ni de las caballerıas, sino de la literaturacaballeresca’.20 But a more convincing explanation for Don Quixote’spassivity in this phase of the novel can be found in the underlying sense ofthe narrative action itself: it is the humiliating defeat he has endured at thehands of his own servant shortly before their arrival in Barcelona that has sotaken the wind out of the mad knight’s sails; far more so, indeed, than hislater defeat by the Caballero de la Blanca Luna, which at least comes aboutthrough a traditional chivalric duel. The fact is that the fight between DonQuixote and his squire in Chapter 60 represents the logical climax ofSancho’s steady rise to power in Part Two*here at last the peasant achievescomplete dominance over the mad knight, who must thenceforth accept hisimpotence to determine his own destiny.

Cervantes, as I have been arguing, repeatedly put a brake on Sancho’srise to power in order to keep the narrative going, but, when it finally came toit, he did not flinch from drawing out the full consequences of the servant’svictory over his master. In Chapter 68, after they have left Barcelona, we findthe knight pleading with the squire to whip himself: ‘Rogando te lo suplico;que no quiero venir contigo a los brazos como la otra vez, porque se que lostienes pesados’ (II.68, 1288�89). Sancho refuses, and Don Quixote moansaloud: ‘¡Oh alma endurecida! ¡Oh escudero sin piedad! ¡Oh pan mal empleadoy mercedes mal consideradas las que te he hecho y pienso de hacerte. Por mıte has visto gobernador y por mı te vees con esperanzas propincuas de ser

20 See Don Quijote de la Mancha , ‘Volumen complementario’, 221.


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conde’. The terms in which Don Quixote laments Sancho’s ingratitude pointclearly to the breakdown of the traditional social relations based on thereciprocity of ‘mercedes’ and ‘servicios’ between lord and vassal, master andservant.21 And Cervantes will drive Don Quixote to further abasement, for inthe following chapters he will bring the Duke and Duchess back into thenarrative and have them re-play some of their old tricks in order toexacerbate still further the conflict between master and servant. InChapter 69 the Duke and Duchess pretend that Sancho has the power tobring the maiden Altisidora back from the dead, if he allows himself to bepinched and pricked by the duenas at the castle, and when Sancho appearsto succeed in resurrecting Altisidora, Don Quixote falls to his knees and begshim yet again to press on with the disenchantment of Dulcinea:

Ası como don Quijote vio rebullir a Altisidora, se fue a poner de rodillasdelante de Sancho, diciendole: ‘*Agora es tiempo, hijo de mis entranas,no que escudero mıo, que te des algunos de los azotes que estas obligado adar por el desencanto de Dulcinea’. (II.69, 1299)

Kneeling before his squire, the knight displays the full extent of hishumiliation before the entire ducal court. But Sancho remains unmoved,refusing to humour the wretched madman in his desperate plight. Finally, inChapter 71, Don Quixote offers to pay Sancho to whip himself, and the squireis all too willing to negotiate a price. Yet still he shows no pity for his madmaster; he is, in fact, utterly cynical: ‘Entrare en mi casa rico y contento,aunque bien azotado’ (II.71, 1311). And Don Quixote is abject in hisgratitude, so abject indeed that he suggests that not only he, but Dulcineatoo, will serve Sancho for the rest of their days: ‘¡Oh Sancho bendito! ¡OhSancho amable! [ . . .] y cuan obligados hemos de quedar Dulcinea y yo aservirte todos los dıas que el cielo nos diere de vida!’ (II.71, 1312). Heartlesseven now, Sancho goes off into a wood and, rather than whip himself, as hehad promised his master, he starts whipping trees instead.

Sancho’s indifference to the knight’s suffering is perhaps the mostuncomfortable revelation of all for the reader in these last chapters. It isas if the squire had been morally vitiated by the web of deceit that he hasspun around his master in the course of their adventures together. Certainlyhe shows no regret at having brought about the downfall of Don Quixote. Ontheir way back home, he hardly spares a thought for the grief-strickenknight, even though he shows a certain sympathy, it could be said, when hetries to dispel the evil omens about Dulcinea that Don Quixote professes tosee as they approach the village.22 But even this flicker of concern smacks of

21 Dunn observed that ‘the hierarchical relation between Don Quijote and Sancho isliterally overthrown when Sancho throws his master and pins him to the ground’, but he doesnot elaborate any further (‘Contested Discourses in Don Quijote , Part Two’, 98).

22 See E. C. Riley, ‘Symbolism in Quixote , Part II, Chapter 73’, JHP , 3 (1979), 161�74.


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condescension, in my view, and, in any case, it is superseded all too soon byhis celebrating his return as a triumphant homecoming, declaring happily tohis wife Teresa: ‘Dineros traigo, que es lo que importa, ganados por miindustria, sin dano de nadie’ (II.73, 1325).23 And Teresa’s reply is an echo ofher husband’s greed and moral obtuseness: ‘Traed vos dineros, mi buenmarido [ . . .] y sean ganados por aquı o por allı, que como quiera que loshayais ganado no habreis hecho usanza nueva en el mundo’.

The relationship between Quixote and Sancho has reached a pretty bleakstate of affairs; too bleak perhaps even for Cervantes himself, for in the lastchapter he attempts to mitigate the harshness of the preceding episodes byrestoring a degree of affection between master and servant which had been inevidence only rarely since Part One. Sancho shows signs of grief at theapproaching death of his former master, and Alonso Quijano, havingrecovered his wits and rejected the mad world of Don Quixote, expresseshis fondness for Sancho in his last will and testament, referring to ‘lafidelidad de su trato’ (II.74, 1332). But, clearly, there is more benevolencethan truth in this last phrase, since Sancho’s treatment of the deludedhidalgo has been anything but faithful in Part Two.

Madariaga’s theory of the ‘sanchificacion’ of Don Quixote and the‘quijotizacion’ of Sancho will scarcely do to describe the dynamics betweenknight and squire over the course of the entire narrative. Despite observingthat ‘power is to Sancho what glory is to his master’, and dedicating a chapterto what he called ‘the rise of Sancho’, Madariaga held to a deeply sentimentalview of the relationship, insisting on the ‘fraternity of soul’ which unites thepair.24 But, as I hope to have demonstrated, the knight has not been‘sanchified’ by the end of the novel, rather he has become the principal victimof his madness* it has made him suffer, it has led to his disempowerment,and finally, it has destroyed him altogether, forcing him to abase himself inthe most humiliating way before his squire. Equally, far from ‘quixotifying’Sancho, his service with Don Quixote has gradually brought out the veryworst in him, making him cynical, greedy and thoroughly deceitful. There is,in fact, no fraternal bond, no mutual influence, no common sap flowingthrough their actions; their association has ended in conflict, division, andthe merciless exploitation of the master by his servant.

Cervantes, moreover, was not unaware of the wider political dimension ofthe power-struggle that he had first adumbrated as far back as the FullingMills episode in Part One. In the final crisis, when the knight has been forcedto the ground by his squire, Sancho’s defiant assertion: ‘Ayudome a mı, que

23 Gethin Hughes demonstrated how money increasingly becomes a determining factorin the relations between Sancho and Don Quixote over the course of Part Two (see ‘The Cave ofMontesinos: Don Quixote’s Interpretation and Dulcinea’s Disenchantment’, BHS , LIV [1977],107�13).

24 Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology , 134, 136,respectively.


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soy mi senor’, inevitably carries political resonances, for it implies aconscious rejection of the traditional basis of authority and status, andportends the emergence of a different world, a world that Cervantes himselfmust have imagined with disquiet, if not with dread. Thus, at the heart of theQuixote , there is an intriguing irony: Cervantes may well have started out onhis adventure of writing with the purely literary aim of discrediting the‘maquina mal fundada destos caballerescos libros’, but by a series of logicalsteps arising from the interaction of master and servant he was led toundermine the principle of hierarchy that was a cornerstone of the ideologyof his day.


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