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CONTENTS

CHARACTERS IN THE ORDER OF THEIR APPEARANCE

A PLAY IN THREE ACTS

ACT I

Scene: An old-fashioned sitting-room belonging to a gentleman in easy circumstances; the wall covered with canvas; a gun and sword hanging on a rack on the wall and an empty birdcage; a cupboard in the wall. Window at back. Two doors. That on right leading to a passage at end of which is Quixote’s room; that on left to garden path. The Housekeeper is unfolding a frilled shirt.

Housekeeper (Having looked from window goes to inner door, opens it and calls out): Are you nearly ready, sir? I see Sampson Carasco the Notary coming up the road. He only came back to the village yesterday. He will be happy seeing you so much improved. Put on now, sir, your frilled shirt I have aired for you.

(She goes through door. Carasco comes in. She comes back.)

Carasco: Fine morning. How is the Master?

Housekeeper: You are welcome, Mr. Carasco. He will be able to welcome you himself to-day. It is the first time he has been fit to move from his room these six weeks.

Carasco: So I heard from the Priest and from the Doctor. I was sorry to be so long away, and not able to look in and give him advice. This new regulation about the boundaries is calling me here and there.

Housekeeper: So they were telling me.

Carasco: I am to go and see the Duke one of these days at his new hunting lodge about some business of the sort. Now that is good news that Mr. Quesada is better. (Goes towards door right.)

Housekeeper (stopping him): He will be coming in here within a few minutes. He is putting on the frilled shirt I had aired for him. But his strength is greatly reduced. Though as to all the eggs I spent getting it up a little, God and the world is my witness, and my hens that will not let me lie!

Carasco: That fever should have left him very weak in the limbs.

Housekeeper: It did so. (Nods mysteriously.)

Carasco: More than that maybe?

Housekeeper: Ah, he’ll be all right now he is leaving the bed.

Carasco: You can speak out to me, I being his close friend and his adviser. You did not take notice of there being any queer way in his mind?

Housekeeper: Ah, what would ail his mind, and he so full of learning?

Carasco: Tush—with all his learning a child might nearly persuade him it was night at noonday. It is well for him to have me at hand.

Housekeeper: Was the Priest saying anything?

Carasco: He was. And the Doctor was saying that he got to be very cloudy and changeable. They thought it right to warn me he might be neglecting his little property, I having the management of his niece’s estate who is his next heir.

Housekeeper: If there is anything wrong with him it is books that did it. Reading and reading he is this good while back. No one could have good sense keeping his eyes from dawn to dark upon a printed page.

Carasco: Oh, he is a very educated man. But I wish I could give him more of my company. He is too much alone.

Housekeeper: That is what they were saying, that it was time for him to take a wife and to rear up a family. But maybe books make less trouble in the house, little profit as they are to anyone.

Carasco: Tut tut. There are books and books.

Housekeeper: Whatever may be within the cover I have no liking for the dust that had gathered on those he brought down from the loft overhead, and that he kept in piles on the floor till I turned out all my linen I had in the cupboard. (Opens it.) Will you look at them?

Carasco (taking out one or two books): These are just the very sort that have filled his head with tales of follies and knight errantry.

Housekeeper: That’s it. He has strange giddy talk of the champions he lays down went out in search of adventures in the early days of the world.

Carasco: The priest was talking of that. He is of opinion it is these queer tales he is stuffing himself with, that have gone near to turning his brain.

Housekeeper: That might be so. Blows and slashes, and complaints the knights make when they are absent from their lady. That is what I hear him giving out. Indeed you would nearly feel pity for them—king’s daughters so hard-hearted that sooner than bestow a kind look on an honest gentleman, would let him die or run mad.

Carasco: I’ve heard of those sort of foolish romances. Stuffed with stories of an unprofitable race of people. Dreams told by men half asleep.

Housekeeper: Wizards and enchanters, he reads out stories of, doing every folly and every bad thing. I thought they were gone out of the world this good while, or only in the old people’s folktales. I’d nearly wish one of them to come here now, and carry away the whole of these books that are filled with stories of their cunningness and their deeds and my joy go with them——

Carasco: There is more sense in what you are saying than you know.

Housekeeper: I didn’t wait till now to get a name for good sense!

Carasco: It is not far from what I myself, and the priest, and the doctor, were saying this morning.

Housekeeper: About the good sense I have?

Carasco (going to door, opening it and looking out, shuts it and comes back): About doing away with the whole bulk of them, that whole rabble of knights and enchanters, the contrivance and invention of idle wits.

Housekeeper: And did his Reverence say that?

Carasco: He did. “Can’t he be content,” he said, “to read in the Holy Scriptures the exploits in the Book of Judges? And the devil take all such books,” he said, “that have spoiled the finest understanding in the whole province of La Mancha.”

Housekeeper: That was very nice talk.

Carasco: “Throw out,” he said, “those accursed romances that are all falsehoods and folly, before they have altogether driven away his wits.”

Housekeeper: Talking’s easy. The Master wouldn’t let us do away with one of them.

Carasco: Would you wish to see him altogether lose his mind?

Housekeeper: Wait till he’ll do something out of the way.

Carasco: That might be too late. Listen now. It is the opinion of the Doctor and the Priest, and of myself, that if this folly goes on, it will be right to put him for a while in the charge of a Holy Brotherhood.

Housekeeper: To give him to be locked up! There is no loyalty in whoever made that thought. That is not in the nature of friendship!

Carasco: It would be to save himself and his estate.

Housekeeper: To put him within walls! I would never give in to see him wronged! There is no one can say any mad drop is attached to him through his father or his mother——

Carasco: It would only be, maybe, for a short time.

Housekeeper: I’d sooner God to have taken him than to see him brought out from his own house and his home! He that never was for drinking or cards or nothing, but was a noble gentleman through his whole lifetime!

Carasco: Be quiet for one moment!

Housekeeper: Let him come out now before you—and God grant he may have put on his frilled shirt—and you’ll see has he any of the signs of a half-wit!

Carasco (jumping up and stamping his foot): Do you think I am against him? I tell you all I want is to separate him clear and clean from what has played the mischief with him—those books!

Housekeeper: Ah, my curse upon them! If I knew they’d bring him under such a danger they’d be at the bottom of the well before this!

Carasco: They might come up again in the bucket. Water is no safe element for getting quit of such things.

Housekeeper: And to bury them, they would be maybe scrabbled up by rabbits, or by boys who would be ferretting for rats.

Carasco: There is only one way to make an end of them—that is by fire. And it has to be done on the minute, before he comes in here from his sick bed. Stop! I took notice as I came in of a bonfire by the roadside.

Housekeeper: So there is—where Sancho Panza is burning the old withered stalks from the field.

Carasco: Sancho Panza from the village? A simple fellow without brains or wit. (Shouts from window.) Hi! Sancho Panza. Come in here—be quick! Hurry! That’s right. (Turns back.) The priest laid down they should be burned by fire the same as if they were written by heretics——

Housekeeper: I’d like well to see them in the heart of it, and the lies in them going harmless on the breeze. But what at all will the master say, missing them!

Carasco: He might not remember to ask for them.

Housekeeper: Not remember! He’d easier forget the nature of the four elements. (Carasco is piling the books near the window.) It’s easy talking for you, that will not be in reach of his passion. To see the shelves empty he will maybe take my life!

Carasco: Here, hurry, Sancho! (Calls and beckons from window.) We might think of a plan.

Housekeeper: There is no plan possible unless you think to put a plaster over his eyes——

Carasco: That’s it! Over his eyes. No, but to shut the cupboard and to pin a bit of that stuff over it. (Points to a piece of canvas on a chair, same as that on the walls.) If he goes looking for it, I’ll engage I’ll make him believe some magical enchanter has carried it away to the Eastern world.

Sancho (at window): What is wanting, Mr. Carasco?

Carasco: Take hold of these books (holds out a bundle) they are dangerous.

Sancho: I wouldn’t wish to meddle with them if that is so——

Carasco: Hurry, hurry, there is nothing will be a danger to yourself. Put them now with no delay on that bonfire outside on the road—come back quick for more.

Sancho: So long as the danger won’t catch on to myself——?

Carasco: It’s only a danger that catches to people who give more attention to romances than to their food.

Sancho: I’m safe so. Give them here to me. (Takes an armful and trots off.)

Carasco (to Housekeeper): Hand me here those other mischief-makers. (Takes one and reads title.) Amadis of Gaul—he was the father of an innumerable rabble of descendants. (Throws it out of window.) Let that author of mischief go into the heart of the bonfire!

Housekeeper: This is one with a nice cover I often saw in his hand.

Carasco (taking it): Amadis of Greece. Into the fire with it! These two books are great liars. I declare I would burn my own father in the flames if I met him in the dress of a knight errant!

Housekeeper: So you would do well, sir. (Gives him other.)

Carasco: Morte d’Arthur. If he had a strange death let him have a strange burial. (Throws.) Roncesval. Into the fire with him without any remission. Tirant—That’s not so bad, for I heard that in it the knights eat and sleep and die in their beds, and make their wills before they die. Take care of it, and I’ll bring it away. Let it have the benefit of transportation.

Housekeeper: Hurry on now or he’ll be coming.

Carasco (putting out an armful): Throw all the big ones out, this whole generation of knights and enchantments. (She throws.) As to this little book of pastorals, it seems to have in it poems about pipes and shepherds, pleasing enough, it won’t do any harm.

Housekeeper: Oh, sir, it’s best make a clean sweep of them, or he may take a fancy to turn shepherd and go wandering and playing on a flute—or worse again, he’ll turn to be a poet, and that’s a disease there’s no cure for!

Carasco: True enough. Throw this stumbling-block out for the fire!

Sancho (at window): The flame is catching on them, but it will be choked if I put more on for a while.

Carasco: Well, we have done enough to satisfy the Priest. Put the rest of this savoury reading out of sight, to be dealt with later by the secular arm of the housekeeper.

(Flings the last lot out while housekeeper finishes plastering the piece of stuff over the cupboard door.)

Housekeeper: I hear him coming! (Hides pastepot.) I declare I’m shaking!

Carasco: Put up that map over the place. I’ll go out that he may suspect nothing. (She hangs up map, then as he goes out, opens inner door.)

(Quixote comes in, very weak and stooping.)

Housekeeper (setting out a chair for him): Ah, sir, you never put on your aired shirt after all. Sit down now for a while. You must mind your health and build it up with good heartening things. I’ll bring in a fat pigeon I have roasted for you. A mouthful of meat and a drop of wine will help to make blood in your veins, and to bring back your strength.

Quixote: Be easy woman. I do not need food.

Housekeeper: Ah, Sir, your stomach will close up if you give it no nourishment at all!

Quixote: One of the best knights of Arthur’s Round Table went fasting through twenty-five days.

Housekeeper: Believe me he ate a good meal at the end of his fast. But as to yourself, you don’t use what would go in the eye of a midge!

Quixote: Cuchulain of Ireland went for a twelve-month without any bit at all, his soul being away through enchantment, with a Queen.

Housekeeper: Ah, that was in the long ago. Maybe men were made with bodies different from what they are to-day.

Quixote: I could tell you of Perseus of the Greeks if you had an intellect to understand—or of Arthur who broke open prison doors with the might of his flaming sword; or the valiant Lauricalce, Lord of the Silver Bridge.

Housekeeper: So I could tell you plenty myself of a champion that with one stroke cut asunder five giants as if they had been so many bean pods. And of witches and wizards, and a hero that went riding over mountains of ice, and through a lake of fire. Wasn’t my grandfather giving out stories of them in the half-dark when I was but a child?

Quixote (interested): Yes, tyrants and enchanters. If they are not among us yet, where does all the oppression come from and all the misery? Mountains of ice and lakes of fire—they are surely around us still.

Carasco (knocking at the door, and coming in): Well, Alonso Quesada, I am glad, sir, to see you are yourself again. It is company you want now, and to be moving about and taking the air.

Quixote (giving him his hand): Indeed I am nearly strong enough now to go out, and find how I can help to do away with some of the troubles of the world.

Carasco: Oh, yes. It is fresh air you are in need of—going out of a morning as you used, with your brace of greyhounds or your angle-rod.

Quixote: No, I have wasted enough of my days in that way, while so many who are doing unkindnesses are left walking the world at their ease.

Carasco: Tut tut. It would not look well for a man in your position, a gentleman of good standing, to go meddling with custom, going maybe against your own class. It would be more likely to do harm than good. (Sits down.)

Quixote: Yet those old knights went out against anyone, high or low, who was doing wrong.

Carasco: There may have been great tyrants at that time, but it has gone by. There is no need now for meddlers to go settling troubles. There are courts of law and judges, and justice to be had for all. It is best to trust to the law.

Quixote: I don’t know. I think Amadis would have found some work to his hand—or Lancelot who went near to death, putting down the slanderers of a queen. They did not wait for courts and judges.

Carasco: Those were things suitable to be done at that time. Our old fathers fought their battles that the generations after them might live at ease.

Quixote: I would never wish to live at ease, so long as there is any injustice left unchecked.

Carasco (jumping up impatiently): Can’t you be content to give what you wish in charity, and say a few prayers for the poor?

Quixote: The religious, with all peace and quietness implore Heaven for the good of the world. But soldiers and knights, of whom I would be one, defend it with the strength of arms, the edge of the sword. And so are God’s ministers on earth, and the arm by which He executes justice.

Carasco (impatiently): I that have travelled and been in college have better knowledge of the world than you. Listen to reason!

Quixote (getting up): That is enough now. I will read my books for a while. I will be so happy to have them in my hand again, to turn the pages, every one of them giving the story of some great deed enrolled in the temple of immortality. No one would bring them to me when I was in my bed, but now they cannot be kept from me.

Carasco: Well, if you won’t listen I’ll be going. I have the Duke’s business to attend to.

Housekeeper (holding him at door): Oh, wait a while sir! Do not leave us till we see what happens.

Quixote (goes where cupboard was, looks around, then looks back at the wall): This is where they were—on the shelves of the press. Where is it? (Passes hands over his eyes): It was at this side of the room——

Housekeeper (low to Carasco): I am getting uneasy. I’m in dread he will find out.

Quixote: I must be weaker than I knew—my memory is failing me. I was sure it was just here—it is not here. (Goes feeling the wall around): It is nowhere——. Has madness come upon me?

Carasco: It is not in the room. You may likely have had some dream about it as you lay in the bed.

Quixote: It was no dream. I am certain it was here, and the shelves in it, and the books. Where is it? What has happened? (Seizes housekeeper by the shoulder): Tell me where it is gone! (Shakes her roughly.)

Housekeeper (whimpering): How would I know? Maybe it never was there at all.

Quixote: You are lying! I am in my senses. I see the room, and the table, and the sword upon the wall. Where is the press with my books?

Housekeeper: Leave go of me, and I’ll tell all I know.—They were maybe carried off by the Old Boy himself as they were likely written at his bidding! (Looks at Carasco for help.)

Quixote (still holding her): Tell me the truth!

(She whimpers.)

Carasco (releasing her): I will tell you that. It’s no use looking for them, cupboard, or shelves, or books. It was not a devil carried them away. It was an enchanter that came upon a cloud. (To housekeeper): Wasn’t that so?

Housekeeper: It was so—the very day you took to your bed! He called out that he was your secret enemy, and away with him, shelves and books and all. All he left after him was a cloud of smoke——

Carasco: There is some smell of it in the room yet. (Sniffs.)

Quixote (leaning on chair): A secret enemy. Merlin the French enchanter it might be—or some other. He must have been watching me—he put that sickness on me. He knows I will some day surely vanquish him or some champion he has under his protection, or release some lady he has in his power. That is the reason he has done me this unkindness! Oh I will pay him what I owe! I will surely get my revenge! (He totters and sits down with head in hands.)

Sancho (coming in): The bonfire made a great blaze up to the skies!

Housekeeper: Go out now! (Pushes him.) And mind your own business.

Sancho: I thought you might have some more fuel to put on it—of the same sort——

Housekeeper: That’s enough now. (Tries to push him out.)

Sancho (to Carasco): There is no person passing the road but stopped to take a look at it—even to a chain of prisoners that were on their way to the galleys.

Quixote: What did you say?

Housekeeper (pushing Sancho again): Go back to your work!

Quixote: What was that about prisoners?

Sancho: They are after passing the road, about a dozen of them, strung like beads in a row, on a great iron chain.

Quixote: Ha! Chained! Where were they going?

Sancho: Where they are forced by the King. That is to row in the galleys.

Quixote: Forced?

Sancho: Condemned for their crimes to serve the King as galley slaves.

Quixote: Brought there against their will?

Sancho: Anyway, it is not with their own liking.

Quixote: It seems this is some of my business. To defeat violence—to succour and help the miserable——(Starts up.)

Carasco (putting hand on his arm): Have sense, sir.

Quixote: That is no sense, to sit idle, while all the oppressors of the world make slaves of their fellow men at their ease! There is no one of those old knights but would have gone out hearing that!

Carasco: If they did they were used to fighting, and they had good armour to protect them.

Quixote: Armour! Yes, so they had.

Carasco: And where do you think to go looking for armour? (Laughs.)

Quixote: Stop, stop! I have it in my mind I saw armour somewhere—somewhere in this house.

Housekeeper: And where would it be?

Quixote: It is long ago I handled it—it was heavy.

Sancho: So it was heavy. (To housekeeper): Didn’t I bring it in at your bidding ma’am, not long ago, from the corner of the old forge where it had been through the years, for to make a place there for your wheel?

Quixote: Go get it. Bring it to me! Make no delay. It is Heaven sent the thought of it! Hurry, hurry—no I will go myself. (Goes towards inner door.)

Housekeeper (holding him back): For pity’s sake! (He breaks away, she follows him.)

(Sancho is going after them, but Carasco holds him back.)

Carasco: This is a bad business.

Sancho: Him getting the armour? What harm could there be in that?

Carasco: Can’t you see the poor gentleman is losing his wits, or has lost them.

Sancho: Is it to go mad you think he did?

Carasco: He is on the road to be shut up in a Brotherhood.

Sancho: To lock him up! Why now would they do that? He’s as harmless as a piece of bread.

Carasco: I am going out to bring the Priest and Doctor to judge of him, whether he can be left at large. Now mind this. You must not let him leave the house until we come. I am acting for his own good. Just keep him quiet and humour him.

Sancho: To be sure I will; and keep him in chat.

(A clatter outside.)

Housekeeper (outside door): They’re very weighty; they’re slipping from me!

(Sancho goes out to help. Quixote comes in, greaves in hand. Carasco turns back from door.)

Quixote: Bring in the rest.

(Sancho and Housekeeper come in carrying armour which they pile on the floor.)

Housekeeper (taking a brush): I’ll sweep the cobwebs from it. But it will be hard to banish the rust.

Sancho: If I had a fistful of sand I could scour it where it is thick.

Quixote (handling it): The buckler—that is good. The gauntlets—the corselet, the gorge too—that wants a lace. Where is the helmet?

Sancho: It is not in it. It was maybe used to make a nest for the hens.

Housekeeper: It was not. They have plenty of nests without that! Here is some sort of a little cap.

Quixote: That is the leather morion. But I would wish it to have more the appearance of a helmet. It should have a visor.

Sancho: Give me here that old birdcage and I’ll put a face on it. (Turns his back and works at it.)

Quixote (taking sword from wall): Now I can go out like Arthur’s knights, or Orlando and the twelve peers of France. (Housekeeper goes, gloomily.)

Carasco (with an impatient gesture and sneer): You are expecting, I suppose, to have your own name, Alonzo Quesada, added to that catalogue.

Quixote: You are right—Quesada—that is not a fitting name—Quixote would have a sharper sound—Don Quixote de la Mancha—that would not be out of tune with Lancelot du Lake.

Carasco: Of all the folly! This must be stopped! (Goes quickly out.)

Quixote: Lancelot went out fighting for a queen’s sake——

Sancho: Faith, I’d sooner go fighting for myself.

Quixote: A knight without a lady to fight for is like a tree without leaves or fruit, a sky without moon or stars. If I chance to meet some tyrant, and force him to yield, will it not be proper to have some lady to send him to that she may dispose of him as she thinks best? (Walks up and down.) I will make her famous, as Tristram did Iseult of the White Hand.

Sancho: Faith sir, you would look long enough in this place, before you would find a queen’s daughter, or anyone at all having a white hand.

Quixote: Whoever I, a knight errant, choose for my lady will have a hand no man in the world dare see a spot on without my leave!

Sancho: Well, I don’t know where your worship will go look, unless among the girls reaping and binding in the field outside.

Quixote: Look you yourself from the window and give me the name of whatever fitting maiden you may see!

Sancho (hurrying to window): There’s a neighbour’s daughter from the parish of Toboso—a strong mettlesome girl with a good blush in her cheeks. Will I call her in till your honour will take a look at her?

Quixote: No, I will take no look at her, nor so much as kneel to kiss her hand, until I bring her the arms and the sword of some one of the tyrants I am going out to destroy.

Sancho: Dulcie her name is.

Quixote: That is not a name for a poet to put in his rhymes, or a knight to bind upon his arm. She must take another—Dulcinea—Dulcinea del Toboso. That is a more fitting name. Here, give me my armour—I will make that name known through all the provinces of Spain!

Sancho (helping him to put on gorget): And what way will your Honour travel the road?

Quixote: As every knight errant has done—on horseback.

Sancho: Faith, if it’s old Rosinante outside in the meadow you are thinking to go ride, it’s likely he won’t carry you far. So lean and feeble as he is—so sharp in the backbone.

Quixote: He will do as well as another, while there is no other to be found. Give me that helmet.

Sancho (holding it up): Look at it now how strong it is. Try it now with a stroke till we see what way it will bear a blow.

Quixote (putting it on): No, it is not likely the enemy will ever come near enough to strike it—hurry now and help me on with this bodycoat.

Sancho (helping him): Faith, it’s all for luck your worship is so much reduced with the fever. They must not have been very bulky in the olden times.

Quixote: Go on with the fastenings.

Sancho: Aren’t you the great warrior now, sir, to go out with nothing but your sword and your armour, against gunpowder that might blow you up into the elements! (Kneels to fasten greaves.)

Quixote: Ah, gunpowder! My curse on this age where we live! But the will of Heaven be done.

Sancho: Are you in earnest, sir, thinking to go out fighting alone, and no one to care you through hardships and the howling of the wolves?

Quixote: That is so. Yet the knights had squires to attend them. Every knight had a squire. Sancho, will you be mine?

Sancho: I don’t know. I have a wife at home and a daughter. I must make provision for them, and not go rambling. How much now did the squire of a knight errant get in those times? Did they agree by the month, or by the day the same as labourers?

Quixote: I never read that any knight errant allowed his squire set wages, and to think I will force the ancient usage off its hinges is a very great mistake.

Sancho: Your worship is always right, and I am but an ass. But I want no more than to pass this life in credit and in comfort. I wouldn’t wish to go wandering away in a wilderness till we’d be turned into mummy. And another thing, if I did go, it would be on condition your worship would battle it out yourself, and I would have but to look to your clothes and your diet. I am as good to fetch and carry as any house-dog. But to think I will lay a hand on the sword, is a very great mistake.

Quixote: As to that I forbid you to raise a hand to defend me whatever peril I may be in, unless it may be against any rascally rabble or low common mob. If they should be knights like myself it is not allowed by the laws of chivalry that you should meddle at all.

Sancho: I will give you my oath, sir, I’ll obey you in that. I am a quiet peaceable man and an enemy to thrusting myself into quarrels and brangles. I’ll keep that law as religiously as to stop work on Sunday. (Stands up.) And from this time forward in the presence of God I forgive all injuries anyone has done or shall do me hereafter, rich or poor, gentle or simple. For it is in my mind that whatever may happen for the knight in a battle, for the poor squire he must sing sorrow.

Quixote: But at some time or other such an adventure may befall, that an island may be won in the turn of a hand, and my squire be made its governor.

Sancho: Ha! An island! I’d like well to taste what it is to be a governor. Let me alone to lick my own fingers! I’ll live on my rents like any duke and let the world rub!

Quixote: It may even be that I may win such a territory as will fit my squire to be crowned a king.

Sancho (speaking low): A king! Tell me sir, if by some of those miracles I should be made a king, would Teresa my crooked rib be made a queen, and my children princes?

Quixote: Who can doubt it?

Sancho (turning his back and muttering as he puts away tools): For I’m certain that if golden crowns were to rain down from the skies not one of them would fit well on the head of my wife Teresa. For good as she is as a woman I am certain she would not be worth two farthings as a queen!

Housekeeper (bursting in): Oh! Sir, you would put terror on the world in those battle clothes! I declare you put my heart across, seeing you. But it’s best for your honour to put on your boots that are well cleaned for you, before Mr. Carasco will come back, and the Priest.

Quixote: Ha! They are coming? I must make haste. (Goes back to his room.)

Housekeeper (closing door after him, stands with her back against it): You look to be in good spirits, Mr. Sancho Panza!

Sancho: Is it me? Why wouldn’t I?

Housekeeper: It is likely you won’t eat your bread for nothing! I heard your talk, and you giving in to blind vagaries. Yourself and your islands!

Sancho: Well, if I covet islands there are some that covet worse things!

Housekeeper: And you so cock sure! Making much of yourself, thinking to govern it! Let it come and let us see, as one blind man said to another.

Sancho: I wish I may get it as quick as I’ll know how to govern it!

Housekeeper: A governor! Good luck to you! Without a government you came into the world, and without one you’ll be laid in your grave. Thinking yourself fit for such an office. What a hurry you’re in!

Sancho: Why wouldn’t I hurry when fortune is knocking at my door! If I am not able to govern now I won’t be at the age of Methuselah. If I fail it won’t be for the want of a head to govern it!

Housekeeper: And what will they say to the governor’s wife, that went to Mass yesterday with the tail of her petticoat over her head?

Sancho: Honours change manners. Wait till you’ll see her sitting on a sofa with velvet cushions and tapestries, in under a canopy of state!

Housekeeper: And the little girl you have? Will she be Frenchified too?

Sancho: My little daughter is fit to be presented to the Pope himself in person!

Housekeeper: You’ll be looking for a great match for her?

Sancho: Well, why would you hinder me from marrying her to one that’ll maybe bring me grandchildren that will be called your lordships!

Housekeeper (advances into room. Quixote appears at door listening): God grant I may see you dumb before I die! (Looks from window): Look out now and you’ll see Mr. Carasco and the Doctor and the Priest coming! They will be here within five minutes to put a stop to your grand notions and to banish all your great hopes and plans! They have their plan made to put the master in safe keeping, that he will stop quiet under locks within a Brotherhood from this out, and quit his notion of rambling over hills and valleys, till he’ll learn that this whole business of knights errant is all invention and lies!

Quixote (bursting in): If you were not a woman I would make such an example of you for that blasphemy that the whole world would ring with it!

(Housekeeper falls back whimpering.)

Sancho: Now maybe, my lady, you’ll hold your peace!

Housekeeper (turning back): If your honour would but bring with you your good shirt!

Quixote: I will burden myself with nothing! I am going out for the doing away with tyranny; to face danger whenever it may come! And along with that I will send the name of Dulcinea del Toboso sounding through the ages of the world!

(He rushes out. Sancho slowly follows. Housekeeper gives a wail of lamentation.)

Curtain

ACT II

Scene: A wooded background; a well near centre: Armour piled beside it.

Sancho (coming in on right with a large sack, and one or two smaller bags): Are you here your worship? (Calls out.) I followed the track of the horse as far as the brink of the wood. I saw him grazing below in the meadow. I left my poor ass, Dapple, along with him. (Listens.) He cannot be far off—here is his armour on the brink of the well. (Raises his voice.) It is me, Sancho Panza is calling your honour! You need not go fasting, I have a good share of provisions I brought away from the inn!

(He lays his bags down, throws the sack behind the well. Walks to left of stage.)

A Voice shouting from right: Here is the thief! Come on, lads!

(More shouts, and three men, muleteers, rush in.)

Sancho (turning): It’s those mule drivers I saw in the stable yard of the inn.

1st Man: Here’s the fat fellow, sure enough!

2nd Man (seizing him): No wonder he’s fat, if he has eaten all he brought away!

3rd Man (seizing him): Here we have him safe enough. Tickle him with a touch of the whip!

1st Man: No, but get a rope and hang him from a tree!

Sancho: What at all are you doing?

1st Man: If you have any prayer to say, say it before the rope will choke you!

Sancho: Have a care what you do! My master is at hand—Don Quixote de la Mancha!

2nd Man: Don Robber you should say! Don thief!

3rd Man: He that would not pay his night’s lodgings at the inn!

1st Man: Threatened the landlord with a sword when he asked for honest dealing!

2nd Man: Said he would make no payment, he being a knight errant!

Sancho: So he is that! And when he wouldn’t pay why would I pay? That goes by rule and reason. Like master like man! Do you think I would let so good a custom be lost through me?

1st Man: Hay and barley for your two beasts, and your own supper and your bed!

2nd Man: Besides what you brought away with you in the bags! (Seizes and opens one.) Look here, lads, the plunder he brought away with him! Beef and cheese—and a wine bottle—that beats all!

3rd Man: Put a rope around his neck, and he’ll swallow no more stolen goods!

1st Man: Turn him upside down and shake him till we see what he has in his pocket!

Sancho: Shake away! For I swear on my oath I have no penny at all, or no halfpenny, if you were to strip the skin off me in your search!

1st Man: Here, we’ll toss him in the horse-blanket till we’ll see is he empty! (Unfolds it.)

2nd Man: Bring it out from the trees, here to where there is no boundary but the sky!

Sancho (shouting): Master! Master! Come, come and save me!

Men: Do you think we care two farthings for your master? Up with him! (They put him in the blanket.)

Sancho: Stop! Stop! You’ll have me killed.

All the Men: One—two—three—away! (They toss him.)

1st Man: Up with him again till he’ll hit the stars!

Quixote (coming from the right, brandishing sword): What is this outrage?

Sancho: Help, help! Master! I have no bone but is broken!

Quixote: Impudent scoundrels! How dare you lay a hand upon my squire!

3rd Man: We were but canting him nearer to heaven. One, two, three——

Quixote (rushing at him): Out of my presence! (They all run off laughing.) Ignorant monsters. I would flay you alive were you worthy of my sword!

1st Man (calling back): Never fear, Sancho, but the next time we get a hold of you we’ll hoist you to the clouds!

Quixote: I will follow the scoundrels and teach them what it is to meddle with anyone under my protection!

Sancho (holding him): Do not, sir, or it might be worse for us. They spoke very bad of your worship as well as myself, for not paying the reckoning at the inn.

Quixote: The low-born crew! What knight errant ever paid customs, porterage, or ferry-boat? These are their due in recompense of all the hardships they endure, by night and by day, in heat and in cold, subject to all the inclemencies of heaven and all the inconveniences of earth.

Sancho: I said the same thing myself, though I am not so well read as your worship in scriptures errant. (Rubs himself ruefully.): And I’d lay my curse upon all knights of the sort, if it wasn’t that your worship is one.

Quixote: Talk on, my son, and you won’t feel the pain; and if you wish to go back from this high aim to your wife and children, I will not hinder you. Honey is not for an ass’s mouth.

Sancho: Dear sir of my soul, I confess that to be a complete ass, I want nothing but a tail.

Quixote: It is time to go on. I will not rest until I have a story to tell of great deeds done.

Sancho: Your worship will make no hand of doing deeds if you go on fasting. For by your appearance I’d say you have hardly strength to feed a cat. I brought away a bit in my wallet those robbers near had me robbed of. (Takes up bag, and pulls food out.) Such misusage and such mishaps! But bread is relief for all sorts of grief. And let us get to our meal, for all besides is idle talk of which we must give an account in the next world. Eat a bit, sir, it will keep the life in you.

Quixote: No, no. I, Sancho, was born to live dying; but you to die eating.

Sancho (with mouth full): Well, I will stretch my life by using food till it reaches the end Heaven has allotted to it. For the greatest madness a man can commit in this life, is to suffer himself to die.

Quixote: Stop that foolish chatter. There is one thing only I want to hear from you. Before you touch another morsel give me the news I crave of my lady Dulcinea. Did you see her before you set out?

Sancho: I did. For she is a good girl to work, and early and all as it was, she was out beside her father’s barn.

Quixote: Did she send me any letter?

Sancho: It would be hard for her to do that, unless she had tossed it over the palings of the haggard.

Quixote: Palings of a haggard! Did you fancy those to be palings that surrounded her? You mean galleries or arcades of some rich palace?

Sancho: As your worship pleases. But to me they seemed palings, unless I have a very shallow memory.

Quixote: I will go back there now, for however I may see her, through crannies or through lattice windows, one ray of her beauty, should it reach me, will enlighten my understanding and fortify my heart.

Sancho: Faith, when I had a sight of that sun it was not so bright as to send out many rays. For her ladyship was winnowing a sack of wheat, and the dust that flew out of it overcast her face like a cloud.

Quixote: Can you believe what you say, that my lady Dulcinea was winnowing wheat? That was not wheat but grains of oriental pearls!

Sancho: That is what I saw her doing. A good hardworking girl.

Quixote (threatening him): I tell you Sancho, you are the greatest little liar and rascal in all Spain! I declare to heaven I have a mind to castigate you in a way that will teach honesty to all the lying squires of times to come! You forget the record of all the poets and chroniclers of romance. If the lady worshipped by a knight has to do any labour, it is but to sit in a green meadow embroidering rich stuffs with silk and precious stones. There is not a doubt my lady Dulcinea was so employed, and whoever says otherwise lies like a very great rascal! (Moves a step towards him with sword.)

Sancho (jumping up and backing): All right so. Maybe when I saw her at any time making a leap up on an ass, or salting a barrel of pork, it was an enchanter that changed all that picture in my eyes.

Quixote: Yes, yes. Why did I not think of that. It is that wizard, my secret enemy.

Sancho: Very well. But if enchanters are going to put lies and deceptions on me, my character and my good name will be knocked about the same as a tennis ball. What way did your worship see her yourself?

Quixote: You will put me out of all patience. Don’t you know I never saw the beautiful Dulcinea, and never stepped across her threshold in all the days of my life!

Sancho: If that is so maybe I never saw her myself. Anyway it seems I’m as well able to give an account that pleases you, as to box the moon.

(Shouts heard and rattling of chains.)

Quixote: What is the noise? An enemy coming near?

Sancho (looking out): It is not, but a chain of galley slaves. The very same troop that passed the road ere yesterday beside your honour’s own house.

Quixote: The very men I came out to save!

Sancho: It’s best leave them alone.

Quixote: To loose the chains of captives—to raise the fallen and cast down. This is my business.

Sancho: Believe me they are a bad class or they wouldn’t be sent to the galleys.

(A guard and three prisoners come on chained to one another. The chain extends and the rattling as of other prisoners is heard.)

Quixote (gently to guard): Stop a minute, friend. I would ask why it is you have put chains on these men—where are you leading them?

Guard: They are slaves going to the galleys by order of the king.

Quixote: And for what reason?

Guard: For their crimes. That should be reason enough. Hurry on! (Pokes 1st prisoner.)

Quixote (holding up hand to stop him): I would ask you, sir, to tell me the cause of this misfortune that has come upon them?

Guard: I have no time to lose telling out crimes and causes.

Quixote (putting hand on sword): If you knew who I am, and what is my purpose, you would not refuse me.

Guard: I’ll stop here for no one. I am fasting since the break of day—delayed on the road, and not bringing meat or drink with me as you yourself would seem to have done! (Points to Sancho’s provisions.)

Sancho (hurriedly): If the Captain would take a share of the provisions my master would be well pleased. He never begrudged food or drink to anyone, rich or poor. (Holds out bottle and food.)

Guard: Give a drink so, and he can put his questions while I eat a mouthful of meat. Come, ask themselves, sir, and it’s likely they’ll answer you, for they are a class that take as great a pleasure boasting of their rogueries as they do in committing them. (Puts down his gun, and eats and drinks.)

Quixote (to first galley slave): Tell me my friend what crime it was that brought you into these chains?

1st Prisoner: Well your worship—it was through falling in love.

Quixote: For being in love! If that is a crime I myself, like all knights errant, might be sent to the galleys.

Prisoner: It was not just the same sort your worship has in mind. My crime was falling head over ears in love with a roll of fine linen, and holding it so close in my arms that if it had not been taken from me by force I would not have parted with it to this day.

Quixote (to 2nd Prisoner): And what was the cause of your misfortune?

(Prisoner shakes his head, but says nothing.)

1st Prisoner: He is ashamed to answer, sir. He was a cattle stealer.

Quixote: Is that the most shameful of crimes?

1st Prisoner: It is not, sir. But when he was threatened with the torture he confessed to it. And for that reason the rest of the gang abuse him, and will have nothing to do with him, for confessing, and not having the courage to say no.

Quixote (going to the third, who is more heavily chained than the others, and whose hands are fastened with a padlock): Why is this man fettered and shackled so much more heavily than the rest?

Guard (with his mouth full): He has committed more villanies than all the rest put together. He is that desperate criminal Parapatta.

3rd Prisoner: Fair and softly now. Let you not be lengthening my name. Passanante is my name, and not Parapatta. Let everyone turn himself round and look at home, and he’ll find enough to do.

Guard: Keep a civil tongue in your head, thief that you are, or I’ll make you keep silence to your sorrow!

Passanante: Some people will learn some day what is or is not my name! (To Quixote.) As to you, Mister, if you have anything to give us, give it out, and God be with you, for we’ve had enough of your questions—and I’ve had enough of being called out of my name by that policeman. But misfortunes always fall upon the best!

Guard (threatening him): Upon the worst! And that is what you are.

Passanante: I told you to go fair and easy. For it wasn’t to ill-use us poor prisoners your masters gave you this authority, but to lead and bring us to wherever the king commands. So let everyone hold his tongue, and live well, and speak better; and let us march on, for we have been kept here long enough.

Guard (striking at him with knife he has been cutting meat with): Hold that glib tongue of yours!

Quixote (seizing the knife): No, do not strike him. It is only fair that he who has his hands chained up should have his tongue a little at liberty. (Turns to prisoners.) I see my dear brothers that you are going to your punishment against your liking, and against your will. But it may be that the judge, by some twisting or wresting of the law has led to your condemnation; or the want of money or of friends.

Prisoners: That’s it! That is so.

Quixote (to guard, taking his arm): And so I beg you, sir, to loose these prisoners, and let them go in peace. For it seems to be a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and nature made free.

Guard (trying to free his arm): Have done with meddling, whoever you are!

Quixote: These poor men have done nothing against you. Let them answer for their sins in another world. I ask this of you gently, but if you do not grant it, this sword in my hand will compel you.

Guard: To let the king’s prisoners go! That’s a good joke. Go out of this, sir, and mend your wits, and do not go looking for five legs on a cat!

Quixote (furious): You are a cat and a rat and a rascal along with it! (He attacks him so suddenly that he falls wounded and crawls away.)

Passanante: Catch a hold of the gun, boys, it’s the only one they have! Here’s our chance! Take from him the key of our chains. (They snatch the key from guard as he crawls, one of them opens Passanante’s chains, he seizes gun.) Now come on ye guards at the back! I’m ready for you! (Fires it.) There they run!

(The prisoners, having thrown off their chains, cheer, and also those off stage.)

A Prisoner: They are running like hares! They’ll never stop till they get to the holy Brotherhood!

Passanante: Give a cheer now for our deliverer!

(All shout and cheer clustering round Quixote.)

Another Prisoner: Anything we ever can do for you, we’ll do it.

Quixote: That is well. To be thankful for benefits received is the property of persons well born. (They are snatching up and eating remains of Sancho’s food.) And what I ask of you as my reward is, that loaded with the chains I have taken off your heels you go now at once to the City of Toboso to present yourselves before the lady Dulcinea, and tell her the story of your deliverance, and that her knight sends you to present his service to her. Having done this you may go in God’s name wherever you will.

Passanante: What! Go show ourselves on the road! And all in a string! Not at all. What we have to do is to go alone, every man by himself, and hide ourselves in the very holes of the earth from the hue and cry that will be made after us. What we will do for your worship in place of that, is to say a few prayers for you on our beads as we find time, running or resting, by day or by night. But to expect us to go travelling the open road to Toboso by broad daylight is what we will not do!

Quixote (threatening): On my oath then, you, you ill-born ruffian, or whatever you may call yourself, will go alone on my message with your tail between your legs, and the whole chain upon your back.

Passanante (giving a sign to the others): Give him something to remember us by boys! And away with us!

(They attack him. He stumbles and falls. All the prisoners shout and run off. Sancho, who had gone to end of stage and shrunk almost out of sight, comes back.)

Sancho: Oh my dear master, are you dead or living, after the way they have treated you!

(Quixote tries to rise but cannot. Groans.)

Sancho: Do not stir at all now—all blood and bruises as you are—and your cheek looking very pale and wan. (Wipes his face.)

Quixote: Help me to stand up.

Sancho: How can you rise up, and so battered as you are?

Quixote: Get a little water from the well.

(Sancho goes to it, comes back and helps him to sit up. He moans.)

Sancho: It is no thanks to those villains if the whole of your bones are not broken. (Goes on bathing his wounds.)

Quixote: If I do not complain of pain, it is because it is not the custom of knight errants to cry out, when they are wounded and bruised.

Sancho: God knows I’d be glad to hear your worship complain. As to myself, I must complain of the least pain I feel—unless this business of not complaining of bangs or encounters is a part of the duty of squires.

Quixote: The wounds would be little to bear had they been given me by the gaoler from whom I set the prisoners free. But those slaves to have turned on me! Oh, there is nothing so bitter to bear as ingratitude.

Sancho: Ah, to expect thankfulness from that class, is to go looking for mushrooms at the bottom of the sea.

Quixote (sitting up): And yet, toil, disquietude, and arms were designed for what the world calls knights errant, of whom I, though unworthy, am the last. And so I count myself a happy man.

Sancho: In my opinion your worship is better fitted for plaster than discourses. And it’s what I’m thinking, it would be best return to our village now while it is reaping time, and not go running into disadventures till we won’t know which is our right foot. To retire is not to run away.

Quixote: Adventures Sancho! And you having nothing to complain of, being sound and sain.

Sancho: Nothing to complain of? Maybe he that was tossed in a blanket a while ago, was not my father’s son!

Quixote (rising with difficulty): I know the reason of my misfortune. I should not lawfully have taken up this business until I have received the order of knighthood.

Sancho: And what way will your honour receive that?

Quixote: I should spend the night watching by my armour in a chapel——

Sancho (looks around): Faith I see no chapel here around.

Quixote: In place of that I watched beside the well. But the other virtue of knighthood lies in the stroke of the sword.

Sancho: If that is so, couldn’t I give your honour a stroke myself?

Quixote: That is folly. It must be given by some one who already belongs to the order. I will await a rightful hand.

Sancho (getting up): Let us get out of this now sir, knighthood or no knighthood. For with these ruffians you let loose, and the soldiers and gaolers that will be coming looking for them, we have more use for heels than hands. But to say that to your worship, I might as well be hammering on cold iron.

Quixote: Silence, Sancho. You have no authority to meddle or to question what I do.

(Horn heard from the wood.)

Quixote: What is that? A trumpet?

Sancho (listening): It would sound like a party of hunters following after their prey.

Quixote: It may be rather some champions setting out to fight against the Moors. Go, Sancho! See if there is any knight among them who will admit me to his order. I will stay and watch over my armour, as is fitting, as I did through the night time beside the well.

Sancho: Faith, it would be best for your worship to go and put it on you beyond, under the shade of the trees. For indeed you are no way dressed for company.

Quixote: I will do that. (Sancho goes off left.)

Quixote (takes up armour and stands leaning on the sword): I am about to join that great company of Saints and Christian adventurers; Diego who went against the Moors, one of the most valiant knights the world ever had, or heaven has now; St. George, one of the best errants in the divine warfare; St. Martin who divided his cloak with the beggar. These professed what I profess, that is the exercise of arms. The only difference is, that they were saints, and fought after a heavenly manner; and I am a sinner and must fight after an earthly manner. They conquered heaven by force of arms, and I cannot tell what I may conquer by force of suffering. (Goes off left.)

(Voices heard right. Duchess and ladies come on right, as Sancho comes back left.)

Duchess: I think you must be Sancho Panza?

Sancho: That is so, ma’am.

Duchess: But where is your master?

Sancho: He is within among the trees, your honour, my ladyship, putting on his armour. Readying himself to be made a knight errant.

Duchess: It is a pity I am no queen to make knights. I must call to the duke, my husband, to do that.

Sancho: My master, Don Quixote de la Mancha, is well worthy to have that honour, or any honour, given to him by the king himself.

Duchess: Then he is really that Don Quixote whose story I have been hearing from the Notary who has come to our lodge. And we have just got word that he has set free a whole string of galley slaves?

Sancho: If he did, they had a queer way of showing their thanks. Eaten bread is soon forgotten. And at his first start he has got more kicks than ha’pence. It’s likely he is another sort of knight from those now in fashion.

Duchess: Tell me now, as we are alone, and he cannot hear, is this wonderful master of yours altogether in his right mind, or a little touched in the head?

Sancho (goes, finger on lips, towards left, listens, comes back): Now, ma’am that I’m sure no one hears us, I’ll give you a straight answer. At some times he has so much sense that Aristotle himself could not speak better. There’s not a history in the world he has not at his fingers’ ends, and pasted down in his memory.

Duchess: But this story about Dulcinea; I hear he claims she is the most beautiful lady in the world.

Sancho: That’s it. When he begins his raving about her you would nearly say him to be stark, staring, mad. He nearly knocked the head off me a while ago when I said I left her winnowing in the barnyard. Never fear the next time he’ll ask me, I’ll say I saw her covered with diamonds riding on a white palfrey, and her dress one blaze of flaming gold.

Duchess (laughing): You have a good imagination to make such a picture as that.

Sancho: I often heard him raving out of his books about people of the sort, when I was bringing in sticks for the fire, or a thing of the kind. It is no sin to lie to him when he is out of his mind. It’s a lot better do that than to let him drive me away for truth-telling, and be left with no one to tie up his wounds or put the saddle on his horse. I did well a while ago, putting in his head that she was changed by enchantment—and she as much enchanted as my father!

Duchess: But something whispers in my ear, if Don Quixote de la Mancha is a fool or out of his mind, and Sancho Panza knowing this, follows him, he must be yet more foolish than his master.

Sancho: It’s hard to tell. There are but two families in the world, my grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have Nots; and she stuck to the Haves. It’s early days yet. If he is cudgelled to-day he might be an emperor to-morrow. To-day without a crust to nourish him, and to-morrow with two or three kingdoms in his hand, and the government of an island to give to his squire. Hammer on stoutly, and pray to God devoutly. And it’s what I’ll pray, that heaven will direct him to whatever is best for him, and will enable him to bestow most favours on myself.

Duchess: You are a brave man, Sancho.

Sancho: I am not. It was allotted to me to follow him. We are of the same townland. I have eaten his bread, I love him, he returns my kindness. He has promised me an island. And so it is impossible anything would part us, but the sexton’s spade and shovel.

(The Duke comes in L. in hunting dress and gun with Carasco, who, seeing Sancho, falls back.)

Duchess: Here is the duke.

(Sancho goes aside.)

Duke: Our men have gone home carrying the boar I killed. I thought you might have found some game in this thicket?

Duchess: So I have. Something you will never guess. This very Don Quixote we have been hearing of is close at hand waiting for you to knight him.

Duke: Ha, ha, ha! How could I do that?

Duchess: Just give him his own way, and strike him on the shoulder as if in earnest, and we’ll have all the fun in the world. And this is Sancho Panza, his squire. Quixote has promised to make him governor of an island.

Duke: Ha, ha, ha! That’s very good. Does he think he really will get it?

Sancho (offended): If I do not, I am not one to fret. It might be all for luck. It might be easier for Sancho the servant to get into heaven than Sancho the governor. And I love the little black nail of my soul better than my whole body! (Goes off with dignity, L.)

Duke: Here’s the Toboso Notary, he came after us when his work was done, hearing there was news of this poor cracked Quixote.

Carasco (bowing to duchess): Your grace, I am determined to bring home my poor friend Alonzo Quesada, who is transformed from a sober gentleman to a knight errant run mad.

Duchess: He will never go with you till he has had some more adventures. What a pity he can’t have a real encounter, with another knight errant!

Carasco: Yes, one who would conquer him, and would make him wish for his bed, and command him to go home and put an end to his wandering folly!

Duke: Ha, ha, ha! That would be very good. But I don’t suppose there’s another madman of his kind to be found in the kingdom.

Duchess: And perhaps Quixote would not be beaten after all.

Carasco: Of course he’d be beaten. It would be strange if a man in his full sense could not put down one who is out of his mind. I would engage to do it myself if I could but meet him in disguise, though I never handled a gun!

Duchess: That would be easy. We brought some dresses for our stage players to the lodge. Go quickly with my Duenna—she’ll show you what you want. Quick, quick—he is coming! (Pushes him and Duenna off.)

(Quixote comes on with Sancho.)

Duke: He looks a queer doleful figure.

Duchess: Now for a real play-game! The knighthood!

Duchess: Don Quixote de la Mancha, the duke and I myself bid you welcome to our forest. (Holds out her hand.)

Quixote (holding out his): Take, madam, this hand, this chastiser of the evil-doers of the world, that no woman’s hand has touched until now, even hers who has the right to my whole body.

Duchess: I am told you had rough treatment from those you freed from their chains.

Quixote: I am well pleased to have been delayed in my journey, since I may now obtain knighthood from such noble hands.

Duke: There is no hurry. It would be better if you would wait till I am at my castle.

Quixote (kneeling): I will never rise from my knees until your courtesy has admitted me to that high order, that I may be qualified to travel through the four quarters of the world, to use my whole strength in aid of the persecuted and the weak!

Duchess (taking his sword, gives it to the duke coaxingly): Here, it is all for fun.

Duke (striking him): Arise Don Quixote de la Mancha, Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

Sancho: Rise up now, sir, as the gentleman bids you. I’ll give you a hand. (He rises.)

Duchess: Heaven make you a fortunate knight!

Quixote (standing up): I will fight for the weak against the strong; for the poor against the rich, for the oppressed against the oppressor. I will make the surpassing beauty of the lady I love to be acknowledged through the whole of the living world!

Duchess: She must surely be happy to know she is loved and served by the light and mirror of Manchean chivalry.

Quixote (with a sigh): I cannot say for certain if she, my sweet enemy, is pleased or not that the world should know I am her servant. I can but say her name is Dulcinea; her country Toboso; her quality is at least equal to that of a princess, since she is my queen and sovereign lady. All the beauty the poets have imagined is realised in her. If her lineage is not that of the Roman Curii or the later Colonna, it may yet give a noble beginning to the most illustrious families of the ages to come.

(A boy bareheaded runs on, his clothes torn.)

Boy: Save me! Save me!

(Duchess goes aside avoiding him.)

Quixote: I will do that. What tyrant is ill-using you?

(Barber, basin in hand, runs in after him, with a stick.)

Barber: Come on, now! I didn’t give you enough of the stick yet!

Boy: Oh, I won’t ask it again—I promise! (He goes behind Quixote.)

Barber: Let me at him! I owe him more strokes than he got! I’ll flay him like any St. Bartholomew!

Quixote: Unmannerly knight, it is not fitting you should meddle with this lad who cannot defend himself! Come, take your lance, and I will make you know it is a shameful thing you are doing, and that you are no better than a coward!

Barber (falling back): Oh, sir, this lad I am chastising is my servant boy—I employ him to wait on my customers, and he is so heedless I am losing money and customers every day. And when I correct him, he says I do it out of roguery and for an excuse to keep back his wages.

Boy: So it is an excuse!

Barber: I declare to heaven he is telling lies!

Quixote: Lies in my presence! Pitiful rascal! I have a mind to run this sword through your body! Pay him directly with no more delay, or by the heaven above us I will make an end of you in this very minute! (Flourishes sword.)

Barber (shrinking back): There is no justice in this! I am an honest barber.

Quixote: A treacherous knight of Barbary! (To boy.) How much does he owe you?

Boy: Sixty pence.

Barber: By the oath of a man in danger of his life, it is not. For I must deduct from it the price of two blood-lettings when he was sick.

Quixote: Very good. But put the blood-lettings against the undeserved blows you have given him. For if some surgeon drew blood from him when he was sick, you have drawn it when he is well. So upon that account he owes you nothing. I command you to pay him this very minute!

Barber: How can I pay him having no money about me? Let him come back with me, and I’ll pay him to the last penny.

Boy: Go with him! The devil a bit! No, sir, I will not, for when he gets me alone he’ll skin me!

Quixote: No fear of that. I have laid my commands on him. Let him swear by his order of knighthood, and I will let him go free, and will go bail for the payment.

Boy: A queer sort of a knight, refusing me the wages of my work and my sweat!

Barber: I am not refusing you! Come along now, and I’ll swear by all the orders in the universe to pay you every penny down, and a luckpenny into the bargain.

Quixote: I am satisfied with that. But see that you perform what you promise, or I swear to you by the same oath to come back and chastise you. And, believe me, I will find you out if you hide yourself closer than a lizard! For I am Don Quixote de la Mancha, the redresser of abuses and wrongs!

Barber (to boy): Come along now till I pay you.

(Barber and boy go off, leaving basin on the ground.)

Duchess (taking duke’s arm): Come and meet Carasco. (Ducal party go off laughing.)

Quixote (holding up his sword): Well mayest thou think thyself happy, O Dulcinea del Toboso, beauty above all beauties, since it has been thy lot to have subject and obedient to thy will and pleasure so valiant and renowned a knight, who has wrested the scourge out of the hand of the pitiless enemy who so undeservedly lashed the tender stripling!

Sancho (taking basin): That chap will be in no good humour when he misses his brass basin that he has left after him.

Quixote: Sancho! Your wits are wandering! That is no brass basin! It is a golden helmet. Give it here to me.

Sancho (giving it): Gold or brass, it is but a barber’s basin. Look at the bit out of it.

Quixote: You think it to be a basin? It is some enchantment that has been put upon your eyes. But I know it to be a helmet. Being so large it is likely it was made for the gigantic head of Malbrino the Saracen. I will wear it as I can, for something is better than nothing, and it will serve to protect me against stones. (Puts it on.)

Sancho (examining his empty bags): I would be better pleased if we had something to protect us against hunger. Those galley slaves have us robbed.

Quixote: Put the saddle on Rosinante. Now we may thrust our hands up to the elbows in adventures! (Goes off, right.)

Sancho: I wish I could thrust my hand into a good pot of bacon—with beans and onions.

(The boy rushes back sobbing and stops.)

Sancho: What ails you, now?

Boy: Where is that master of yours?

Sancho: What do you want of him? To save you another beating?

Boy: No, no! Let him quit saving me! I had enough of saving! (Turns to go.)

Sancho (holding him): What happened you?

Boy: We had hardly got around the corner of the wood, and my master was speaking very kind and very nice, saying he would pay me all he owed. And I said I was thankful to that good gentleman that helped me, and that I wished he might live a thousand years (sobs), and that if I was not paid he would come back and do all he had promised. (Sobs again.)

Sancho: Go on, go on.

Boy: All of a sudden, and when we were well out of sight, he made a step and took a hold of me by the arm, and tied me to a tree——

Sancho: Ah, the low villain, I wouldn’t doubt him!

Boy: “I owe you more than you asked,” says he, “and this is how I’ll pay you!” And whatever thrashing he gave me before, he gave me twice as much this time. And he said I might call now to that redresser of wrongs, and welcome, and that he had not done with me yet, and he would skin me alive. And when he was tired beating me he went away laughing. And I am left worse off than I was before. If he ever meets with me again let him not save me, though he is beating me to bits! (Sobs again.)

Sancho: That now is a queer way of doing good to the world.

(Sounds of trumpet.    A trumpeter appears.)

Boy: Oh! Is that him coming? Let me run! (Runs off.)

Trumpeter: Where is your master? Go tell him there is a knight errant coming to challenge him!

Sancho: Oh! That is no good news!

Trumpeter: Go, call him to come here, and face him.

Sancho: I will not. I will not. Is it to call him to be killed?

Quixote (coming on): What is that sound of trumpets?

(Duke, duchess, and ladies come in, and stand at back, left.)

Trumpeter: A knight errant come to challenge the Knight of La Mancha!

(Carasco, dressed in armour and masked comes on.)

Sancho: The Lord be between us and harm!

Carasco (clasping hands, and looking up in the air): Oh, Casildea de Vandalia, most ungrateful lady! How can you suffer me to pine in hard toils!

Sancho (to Quixote): He would seem to be in love with some lady.

Quixote: It is as natural for a knight to be in love as for the night to be full of stars!

Duchess (clapping hands): Oh, that is splendid!

(Attendant spreads cloak on tree-trunk for her and Duke.)

Duke: This is likely to be as good sport as a bullfight.

Carasco: It is not enough that I have caused you to be acknowledged as the surpassing beauty of the world by the knights of Navarre and of Leon and of Andalusia!

Quixote (advancing): I deny it. Nor would I ever confess that any beauty is beyond that of the lady I myself serve!

Carasco: I have done great labours for my lady’s sake and to win her love. And now she has commanded me to travel through all the provinces of Spain to force every knight I meet to confess that I am the most valiant of men, and she the most beautiful of all women, in the living world!

Quixote: I say again, I deny it!

Carasco: I can boast that having conquered in single combat that famous knight Don Quixote de la Mancha I have made him confess that my Casildea is more beautiful than his Dulcinea! And I claim that in this conquest alone, I have overcome all the knights of the world!

Quixote (restraining himself): Whatever may be the number of the knights you have overcome, Don Quixote de la Mancha was not one of them.

Carasco: I swear by the canopy of heaven I overcame him and made him submit. By the same token he is tall, thin faced, grizzle-haired, hawk-nosed, going by the name of the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure. If that is not enough to convince you here is my sword! (Flourishes it.)

Quixote: This Don Quixote is the dearest friend I have, and I deny what you say. Now listen. Here is Don Quixote himself and he says: Let the whole world stand if the world does not confess that there is not in the whole world a maiden more beautiful than the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso!

Carasco: If she is so great a beauty as you say let me see her and I will confess it!

Quixote: If I should show her to you where would be the merit of confessing so notorious a truth? The business is that without seeing, you believe and confess, affirm and maintain it!

Carasco: I am ready for the fight. I make but one condition, that whoever is conquered shall be entirely at the command of the conqueror, to do whatever he may please, provided it is nothing against honour.

Quixote: I am satisfied. Put up your bevoir now that I may see your face.

Carasco: You will have time enough to look at my face when you are my prisoner and my captive, and forced to obey my commands!

Sancho: Let me go climb into a corktree till I’ll be out of the way of the fight. (Runs to side and calls from there.) Sir, hold up the basin before your face.

(They rush at each other. Carasco falls.)

Quixote (putting sword to his throat): You are a dead man, Sir Knight, if you do not confess that the beauty of my lady is far beyond the pretensions of yours!

Carasco (pushing back sword): I confess, and declare, that the lady Dulcinea’s torn and dirty shoe is worth more than my Casildea’s whole head of hair!

(Quixote puts up his sword, satisfied.)

Sancho: Ha, ha, sir! You have put this champion in pickle anyway!

(As Quixote turns away, Carasco pushes back his bevoir and gasps.)

Sancho (looking at him cautiously): That is the very spit and image of Sampson Carasco—more enchantments!

Curtain

ACT III

Scene: A terrace at the Duke’s Castle. Door at the back into the house. Steps to the garden at the left.

(Duke and Duchess sitting idle.)

Duke (yawning): What a curse it is having to stay in the country once the hunting is over.

Duchess: That boundary business can’t last much longer; the Notary has brought the last plans—and then we’ll be off to the city!

Duke: If we don’t die of dullness before then.

Duchess: You are forgetting our new guests. It was a lucky season for them to come!

Duke: Ha! Ha! I don’t know which to laugh at most, the madness of the master or the foolishness of the man.

Duchess: The girls have been planning such a comical trick to play upon the Don——

Duke: Take care—that may be him coming——

Duchess (jumps up and looks out of door): No, it is only Carasco.

Carasco (coming in, bowing): I have brought these papers for your Grace to look at.

(Duke takes and looks at them.)

Duchess: Have you seen our friend the Knight Errant?

Carasco: Your Grace, I don’t want to hear his name mentioned. I am at my wits’ end. Idlers coming to Toboso through these months past, wanting news of “Don Quixote”; thinking we ought to be pleased at possessing a fellow townsman who is rambling up and down the provinces, shattered in body and in brains.

Duchess: I hope they have not heard of that unlucky fight in the wood?

Carasco (with impatient gesture): They have heard how he attacked a windmill, taking it to be a giant waving his arms. No one could make that mistake unless he had the like in his head!

Duke: Ha, ha! Very good.

Carasco: If I had but got him into my care I would have brought him to his senses by this time.

Duchess: Oh! Heaven forgive you the injury you would do to the whole world, trying to restore to his senses the most diverting madman in it!

Carasco: Sancho, too, that eternal babbler, encouraging his delusion for his own profit!

Duchess: Oh, you must have patience. We can’t spare our jesters yet. Perhaps the tricks our girls are making up will show them the folly of knight errantry.

Duenna (coming in): Sancho Panza is asking to come in. He says by your Grace’s orders.

Duke: Let him come in.

(Duenna goes.)

Carasco: I won’t stay and lose my temper listening to him throwing his pert sayings into the world like fritters. Your Grace, there is someone come with me who is anxious to see poor Quixote—his housekeeper. She thinks he must be tired of roaming, and that she may carry him home.

Duchess: Oh, poor woman, send her in here. Sancho will be so pleased to see an old neighbour.

(Carasco bows and goes.)

Duke: Ha! Ha! He doesn’t like to think of Sancho having seen him beaten in the fight. (Sits down on couch.)

Sancho (coming in): My respects to your Grace, my ladyship.

Duchess: Welcome, Sancho. You have not told us yet half the deeds of your wonderful master.

Sancho (scratching his head and thinking): Going through hardships—in the hunger of forests and wildernesses—sleeping out on thyme and rushes—his companions solitude and the night dew——

Duchess: But his adventures?

Sancho: As to them, some turned out well and some cross and unlucky.

Duchess: Did he ever have a lucky one?

Sancho: He had ma’am. Didn’t he rescue a lady of a princess that was being brought away to the sea by enchanters——

Duchess: Oh, Sancho—enchanters——

Sancho: Anyway by five men on horseback, and an armed bully from Biscay, talking gibberish. Making no more of the Biscayner that fell on him like a mountain than a cat does of a mouse. A great victory! It was in that fight he lost a part of his ear, and all but lost his life.

Duchess: Yes, we had news of it here, and that he did not get any more gratitude from the lady than from the Biscayan.

(Housekeeper comes in at back.)

Sancho: Another time he faced a raging ravenous lion——

Duke: Ha! Ha! A lion. Did he make it confess Dulcinea’s beauty?

Sancho: So he would make it confess, if it could say anything beyond a roar. He forced the keeper to set open the cage——

Housekeeper (coming forward): And where were you at that time, Sancho Panza? Up in a tree, I’ll engage, or down in a furrow of the field, the time the lion made its spring!

Sancho: Not a spring in the world, but turned its back to the company, and laid itself down again behind the bars!

Housekeeper: Is it belittling your master’s courage you are now, to show yourself out as the braver man of the two?

Sancho: If courage could bring him to his death he would have met with it there and then, for he bade the keeper give it some blows that would provoke it to come out. But he refused, and shut the door, saying no one could do more than to challenge his foe, and if the lion would not come out in the field, let the disgrace be left on its own head.

Duchess (clapping hands): Oh, that is very good!

Housekeeper (seeing duchess): I beg your pardon, your honour, my ladyship, for coming into your grandeur, and your palace of mahoganies and jewelleries, where everything is better than another, in search of my master that got demented in the head and in the mind, and was led away by that vagabond before you!

Duchess: Oh, we must not meddle in your little quiet talk with Sancho. Come away, duke. (They go.)

Sancho (calls out): Don’t mind her, ma’am. That one has a tongue that would hang the Pope!

Housekeeper: My respects to their honours, but it’s little I care for any of them, beside my poor master’s four bones, that is my only best friend next to God!

Sancho: Isn’t he well off to be here where there is everything better than another? This kind of a life squares and corners with me very well. I tell you, you’d hear more crackling in the pan in this house than you’d hear in our whole parish within the year! As much of leavings as I couldn’t eat in five days!

Housekeeper: Long you took coming to it! It is you led him astray; bringing him this dance up and down the province, rambling through highways and byways, through deserts without a road! I’ll engage it’s seldom he ate bread on a table-cloth—he that is noble and high-blooded—or laid himself down on a bed!

Sancho: Be easy, can’t you. Wasn’t I there to care him?

Housekeeper: You! that haven’t a hand to take up a stitch in his stocking, or so much as put a patch upon his shoe!

Sancho: Get home you sack of mischief! My master is no whimperer to make complaints!

Housekeeper: Get home yourself, you bag of rogueries! Go mind your cart and your plough! You with your islands and your highlands! That you may be choked with that same island! Is it something you can eat that you are such a glutton after it?

Sancho: Take care how you speak to me that am used to face armies!

Housekeeper: You and your armies! Great armies! It is said on the road they were but a flock of sheep!

Sancho: To say nothing of enchanters and goblins!

Housekeeper: Let him who says that eat the lie and swallow it with his bread. I’d never believe you saw anything worse than yourself!

Sancho: Don’t you cock up your nose at me, or I’ll give you such a gag as will shut your mouth for a year!

Housekeeper: Oh, I’m such a barbarian that will never do anything right while I live! But if I get no grandeurs or governments, I’m not set cutting capers in a blanket like some I know, for all the world to see!

Sancho: Hold your noise! What matters? He that falls to-day may rise to-morrow! We must all have our ups and downs. But there’s sunshine on the walls yet!

Housekeeper: You that went hiding your body behind a tree the time he had the great fight in the wood.

Sancho: Who the mischief can start fighting without anger or provocation? Don’t be so pettish now. Let our masters fight and hear of it in another world, but let us drink and live!

Housekeeper: You look good yourself indeed, and no sign on you of having a broken head or the loss of an ear. It’s likely he was often faint with hunger, while you are grown fat with pure cramming!

Sancho: Ah, you treasure of mischief, you have the sting in you yet. Mind yourself; though I am a poor man I am an old Christian!

Housekeeper: Letting on to have such love and such nature for him, and your heart as hard as a stone of ice!

Sancho: If it is, everyone is as God made him.

Housekeeper: He is, and often a great deal worse!

Sancho: You have too much to say. Big voice and little head!

Housekeeper: If this is the civility you learned on the road you had best have stopped with the brute beasts in the cowshed where you were reared.

Sancho (hurriedly): Have done with your quirks and quillets and go hide yourself out of sight, for I hear our master coming and the company—go back now and I’ll bring you to him in the bye and bye. (They go as Quixote, Duke and Duchess come in.)

Duchess (sitting down and giving him a chair near her): I was longing to ask what news you have of the lady Dulcinea.

Quixote: My misfortunes, madam, though they have had a beginning will never have an end. If I conquer enemies and send them to her, by whom I am taken in the inextricable net of love, how can they find her, if she has by enchantment turned from comely to rustic, from light to darkness, from the north star of my travels to a clumsy jumping Joan?

Duchess: But there are some who say that you, sir, never saw the lady Dulcinea, that there is no such lady, she having been the creation of your own brain, dressed up with all the perfections you could imagine.

Quixote: There is something to be said for that. God knows whether there is or is not a Dulcinea in the world, and whether she is or is not imaginary. But whether or no, I contemplate her as a lady endowed with all those qualities which may make her famous over the whole world. And I give her the praise of high birth, because beauty shines and displays itself with greater degrees of perfection when matched with noble blood, than in subjects that are of mean extraction.

Duchess (clapping her hands): Well done, Don Quixote! I will from this time believe, and make all my people believe, and even my lord Duke if need be, that there is a Dulcinea, living and beautiful, well born and well deserving such a knight as you should be her servant. I can say nothing more than that!

(A doleful noise heard outside, rattle of wheels, and melancholy music.)

Duke: What is happening——?

Duchess (putting finger on her lips, and making signs to him): Someone in trouble! (To Duenna.) Go and see—there must be someone in great hurry or distress coming to the door!

Duenna (coming): It is a lady of rank, your grace—a Countess, a person of quality. She seems to be in great affliction.

Duchess: Oh, poor thing—what can we do for her?

Duenna: She would not tell me—but only that she was in sore trouble, and that it is only here there is help for her to be found.

(Quixote puts hand on sword.)

Duke: Bring her in here till we have a look at her.

Duenna: She is here on my heels, your Grace. She followed me. She must be in very urgent need of help.

Quixote: This now is likely to be some of my business! (Stands up.)

(A veiled lady is led in. She stands and sobs.)

Duchess (going to her): You seem to be very troubled——

Lady: Oh, indeed I am! Such trouble has never come upon anyone in the whole world!

Duchess: Will you not lift up this heavy veil? Here is a handkerchief to wipe away your tears.

Lady: I dare not uncover my face—I dare not let anyone see it!

Duchess: We will do our utmost to help you if you will but tell us your grief.

Lady (more composed): I am a Countess of the Province of Catalonia. I was guardian to a young girl, the niece of the Queen of Candya, who, dying, left her in my charge. (Sobs.)

Duke: We could hear your story better, madam, if we could see you——

Lady: No, No! (Holds veil very slightly asunder that they may hear better): It is hard for me to explain. An unheard of trouble has set my mind astray.

Duke: Go on, madam. Go on.

Lady: This beautiful young girl fell in love with a young gentleman of the court—one Don Clavigo. And there is excuse for her, for though he was not rich he was young and handsome and witty—could touch a guitar so as to make it speak. (Sobs.) Besides that he was a poet—and a fine dancer—and could make birdcages so well that he could get his living by it in case of need.

Duchess: No wonder she took a fancy to him; all this sounds very charming.

Lady: Oh, the bitter is to come! No sooner had the marriage taken place when there appeared—riding on a wooden horse—a cruel enchanter as tall as a giant, called Malambrino, who was cousin to her. He broke into a great fury hearing that the young princess was already wed, and by his enchantments he turned her into a monkey made of brass! (Sobs.) And the bridegroom into a fearful crocodile of some unknown metal. He called out then: “These two presumptuous lovers shall never come back to their own shape until I have fought in single combat with the valiant Knight of La Mancha. For this adventure has been kept by destiny for his great valour alone!”

Quixote (coming forward): I am here, ready. Did he send any sign or token?

Lady: Alas, he put on me a punishment he said would be a sign—and indeed it is one that is worse than death.

Quixote: He shall be made to repent that!

Lady: On the instant I felt a pricking pain cover my face—like the pricking of needles. Oh, that he had rather struck off my head! (She lifts her veil and shows a thick beard.)

Duke: A beard! Ha, ha! This is something new in the way of enchantments!

Lady: Where can I hide myself! Where can I go! Was there ever such a punishment put on any woman! My father and mother would disown me! My curse on the wretched hour in which I was born. Am I to be carried bearded to the grave?

(She faints: all surround her. Duchess covers her face.)

Sancho: This is the queerest enchantment ever I saw! Would it not have been enough for him to cut off the half of her nose, even if it made her snuffle all through her lifetime?

Quixote: Madam, let every hair of my own head be plucked from me by my enemies if I fail to free you from this curse!

Lady (sitting up, but keeping beard covered): Oh! that word has brought me back to life!

Quixote: Tell me where I am to find this outrageous Malambrino?

Lady: That is easy. For he has sent his own magical wooden horse, that was made by the enchanter Merlin in the time gone by. The same horse can be here to-day, to-morrow in Potosi, the third day in France. And although he ambles at such a pace through the air, he is so smooth and easy that his rider may carry a cup of water in his hand without spilling a drop.

(Exit Quixote, R.)

Sancho: For smooth and easy going I’d back against him my own ass Dapple—so long as he may go by earth and not in the skies. And where now, ma’am, is this magic charger to be found?

Lady (rising): He is here, outside on the grass plot ready to make his start with the knight in the saddle, and the squire on the crupper behind—and a covering over their eyes——

Sancho: I would like well to see him. But to think I will go ride on him, with or without a saddle, is to go look for pears on an elm-tree!

Lady: Indeed you must go, or we are likely to do nothing at all.

Sancho: Soft and easy, ma’am. What have squires to do with their master’s adventures? Did you ever hear the name of the squire put with the name of his master in any of the romances of the world?

(Quixote comes back from R, with armour on.)

Lady: Oh, that you would set out, sir! For if this beard is still on me when the heat of summer comes, what will happen to my poor face!

Quixote: I will set out on the moment, I am all impatience to put an end to your great trouble. Come, Sancho.

Sancho: I will not come, with a bad or a good will, or anyway at all. Let this lady find some other way to smooth her face. For I am no witch to take delight in travelling through the air. And if the horse would get tired, or the enchanter be out of humour, it might take us half a dozen years to come back again. And where will my island be by that time? Melted away, maybe, like salt in a shower.

Duke: Go with your master, Sancho, and I give you my word your island shall not be lost by it.

Sancho: All right, sir, I am thankful; but I am a poor squire, and have no fine words. Let my master get up in the saddle. Let my eyes be hood-winked, as the saying is, and commend me to the protection of heaven.

Duchess: Here is a handkerchief to bind over your eyes, Sancho. (Ties it on him.)

Sancho: I’m obliged to you, ma’am. And that there may be some one to do the same for you if ever you would come to the same end of needing it!

Quixote: Follow me. Win or lose, no one can take from us the glory of having made the attempt!

(He and Sancho and Lady go off down steps.)

A shout from below: Now they are up! Bravo Sancho!

Duke (looking down): What on earth is that they are riding?

Duchess (laughing): Some stuffed horse’s head from the saddle room, put on to a barrel filled full of fireworks, crackers and squibs.

A Girl (running on with a bellows): This is to blow the north wind on them! (Blows it from steps.)

(Cries of “Up they go! Sit tight, sir! Up with you! Good man, Sancho!”)

Duchess: Play now a good galloping tune! (Music strikes up.)

Voice of Quixote (as the music has grown fainter): We must have left the earth. I never was on the back of an easier steed. We have the wind behind us.

Voice of Sancho: So we have, indeed. I feel it as strong as the blast of a blacksmith’s bellows.

Duchess and Others: Up they go! (Growing fainter.) Farewell! (Very faint.) They’re out of sight among the clouds!

Duke: Isn’t it time to put an end to this adventure? They will find out——

Carasco (at top of steps blowing through a megaphone): I, Malambrino, am satisfied! I only wanted a proof. Don Quixote’s bravery has won the day. Clavigo and his bride have regained their human forms!

Duke: The adventure is at a glorious end.

Duchess: Now blow up the wonder horse!

(A loud explosion. Shouts and cries. Quixote and Sancho come up the steps.)

Duchess: Oh, what has happened. We thought the sky had fallen!

Quixote: My Lord Duke, the adventure is over. I have passed through the region of air and of fire. The lady’s beauty is restored. Where is she? She vanished as we fell to the ground.

Sancho: Calling out that her face was as smooth as a melon.

Quixote: I will go and put away my sword. (Goes off.)

Duchess: Now, tell me, Sancho, how did you get on in that journey to the skies?

Sancho: Very well, ma’am. When the noises of earth grew to be silent, and we felt the cold air blowing on us, I had a great wish to peep out and see where we were.

Duchess: Oh, but that was foolish.

Sancho: Well, ma’am, whatever way it is, I have some little spice of curiosity, and a desire to know what is hidden from me. So I just pushed up, being behind my master and no one to see me, a little corner of the handkerchief and looked down towards the earth.

Duchess: Oh, naughty Sancho! What did you see?

Sancho: I give you my oath it looked no bigger than a grain of mustard seed, and the people walking on it but a little bigger than hazel nuts.

Duchess: Take care, Sancho. If that was so, one man must have covered the whole face of the earth.

Sancho: Maybe so, ma’am. But for all that, I had a side view of it, and saw it all. And if we flew by enchantment why couldn’t I see the whole earth by enchantment, whichever way I looked?

Duke: Ha, ha! Right, Sancho. What did you do after that?

Sancho: Well, your grace, we were getting very close to heaven, and we passed near the stars where the seven little goats live. And I, that was a goat herd in my own district, had such a longing and such a desire to go play for a while with those little kids that were for all the world like violets, and every one a different colour—blue—and speckled—and carnation—that if I had not, I think I would have died. So I gambolled with them three-quarters of an hour, and I give you my word the horse stopped in the air without moving the entire time.

Duke: You are romancing, Sancho. I have never heard of goats with such colours.

Sancho: No, your grace. But must there not be a difference between the goats of earth and the goats of heaven?

(Quixote returns and sits down.)

(Notes of bugle heard from within the house.)

Duchess: That is the call to dinner. Let us make ready.

(Two girls come in with basin and ewer and a towel.)

Lady: I am come to make his Excellency Don Quixote ready.

(She empties the basin over his head, a lather of soap falling over his face. He starts up.)

Duchess (to Duke, smothering her laughing): This is not of my ordering, it is those giddy girls.

Duke: This is too unmannerly a jest. Come here, girl. Wash me as you have washed Don Quixote.

(She splashes a little water over him. Sancho leads Quixote from the room.)

Duke (to Duchess): If I had not turned it off, calling for the same treatment, they should have been punished for their impertinence.

(A commotion outside, and Sancho runs in followed by the girls with water and a dirty towel.)

Duke: What is going on now?

Girl: Your Grace, this gentleman will not suffer himself to be washed as his master has been.

Sancho: I will not until I have cleaner towels, and cleaner suds, and not those filthy rags. There is no such difference between me and my master that he should be washed with clean water and I get the rinsings of the sink. I have no need of such refreshing, and whoever will offer to scour me, I will smash in their skull with my fists! For such ceremonies and scrapings look more like jibes than good manners.

Duchess (smothering laughter); Sancho is in the right, and as he says needs no washing. Get away you ministers of cleanliness, you have been presumptuous in bringing your jug and dish-cloths instead of fine linen and gold.

(Exit Girls.)

Sancho (falling on his knees before Duchess): For great folk great favours are fitting. A peasant I am; married I am; children I have, and I serve my master. But if in any way at all I can be serviceable to your grandeur I will not be slower in obeying, than your ladyship in giving the command.

Duchess: Why it seems you have learned to be courteous in the very school of courtesy. Rise, friend Sancho, for I will reward your civility by prevailing with my Lord Duke to carry out at once the promise he has made.

Duke: I will do that. This very moment you may set out to become governor of the island. The inhabitants are longing for you as for rain in spring-time.

Sancho: Long live the givers!

Duchess: The Island of Barataria. It will fit you like a ring. The boat is waiting.

Sancho: When they give you a heifer make haste with the halter! Believe me I’ll make no delay.

Duchess: That’s right. There are edicts waiting for you to sign.

Sancho: To sign! Sure I don’t know the first letter of the A, B, C. Well, at the worst, I can pretend my right hand is lame, and make another sign for me. For there is a remedy for everything but death.

Duchess: I am sure you will govern it well.

Sancho: I will feel its pulse. My subjects may come for wool and go back shorn. Aye, aye. Let them put their finger in my mouth, and they’ll see if I can bite. And if they should be blacks, I can ship them off to sell!

Duke (calls over balustrade): Is the ship ready? (Shouts of—Aye, aye, your Grace.) Then conduct His Excellency to the cabin and set sail at once.

(Sancho trots off down steps pompously.)

Duchess: Come, let us eat our meal very quickly—we have to turn this room into the Island of Barataria!

Scene II

(Curtain drops, music is heard. Curtain rises after some minutes. As it goes up all are seen changing the position of furniture, putting a table across, laying it as a dinner table, putting a large armchair at back. They draw a curtain across back. One of the Duennas has brought in a basket of costumes and masks and they are putting them on.)

Duchess: I can only stand in the background. Sancho would know my voice.

Duke: Don’t you think he will recognise the place?

Duchess: No, he will be too bewildered—and then the change of furniture. Duke, you must be the Chamberlain to receive him. He has never heard you say much. You are not a chatterbox like me.

Carasco: What I would ask is to be the doctor in charge of his excellency’s health.

Duchess: That will do very well. The footmen can read their cases of law, and the hall porters will be the mob outside.

Carasco: I’ll pay him off, giving him a diet that won’t please him.

Duke: But will he ever think this is really an island?

Duchess: Of course he will. He is at this moment going shut up in the cabin of the little pleasure boat on the river. They will put a hood over his head when he lands, telling him it is the custom with new governors on arrival, that all may see they will not judge by the sight of the eye, but by wisdom of the mind.

Duke (to Carasco): Those are good law cases you have made up to puzzle him. It will be a comical sight, the giving out of justice by Sancho Panza! Ha, ha, ha!

(A trumpet is heard outside.)

Duchess: Here he is coming! Take your places.

(They arrange themselves. Sancho is led in, his hood is removed, he rubs his eyes.)

Sancho: That was a troublesome journey if it was not a long one. I am well pleased to be on dry land. I got a great tossing on the waves.

Duke (reads): Your excellency is welcome to the State and Government of Barataria. We, the inhabitants, hope you will find happiness in this great office.

Sancho: It is likely I will. It is not covetousness brought me to it, but a thought I have that it is good to command, if it be but a flock of sheep.

Duenna: We feel assured that your excellency will be a wise and good ruler.

Sancho: Well, it will go hard with me, but I will be such a governor that in spite of rogues I shall get to heaven. All bribes refuse, but insist on your dues. That will be my motto.

Duenna: Here is your excellency’s professor of medicine, who will attend to your excellency’s health, and here is your excellency’s chamberlain who will put on your excellency’s robes! (Chamberlain does so.)

Sancho: You may dress me as you will and welcome. But whatever coat I wear, I will still be Sancho Panza.

Duenna: I understand your excellency has been fully instructed as to justice and behaviour by the famous Knight Don Quixote.

Sancho: I was that, and all the advice he gave me was good, as you would expect from one who was reared a gentleman, and is now made much of in a duke’s palace. He wrote it out, too, but I chanced to lose it, likely in that tossing I got in the boat. Anyway, it has gone from me, and I remember no more of it than of last year’s clouds, only that I was not to let my nails grow, and if I should have occasion to marry again not to choose a covetous wife, for whatever the judge’s wife receives, the husband must account for at the day of judgment—and not to chew with both sides of my mouth. And that reminds me it is my dinner time, and I have a mind to eat something warm, for cold-treat has been my fare long enough in field and in forest.

Carasco (in foreign accent): Certainly, your excellency. All is ready here.

(Table with dishes is pushed before him. Carasco ties a napkin under his chin. A dish is handed to him.)

Sancho: That looks good. (Is about to help himself when it is snapped away from him.)

Carasco: Here is another dish, and a better one.

Sancho: It has a savoury smell. (As he puts fork in the dish it is snatched away.)

Sancho: Is this a conjuring show?

Carasco: My lord governor, there must be no eating here but what is customary in other islands where there are governors.

Sancho: A man can’t live on air! Governors are made of flesh and blood.

Carasco: I am responsible for your excellency’s health as court physician. I ordered the first dish to be taken away because it was too moist—and that stewed beef as being too much spiced, thereby causing thirst. For he who drinks much destroys and consumes the radical moisture of which life consists. The health of the whole body is tempered in the forge of the stomach.

Sancho: Then say out which of all the dishes on the table will do me most good, and will not throw my stomach off the hinges, for I am starving with hunger; and whatever you, Mr. Physician, may say, this starvation is more likely to shorten my life than to lengthen it.

Carasco: Your worship is right. But I must forbid you that breast of veal because its dressing is too rich; we don’t know what may have gone into it. But there can be no mistake in simple things, and what I would advise is a wafer biscuit or two thinly spread with marmalade. That is food that will help digestion, and sit light on the stomach. There are cases coming to trial, and to eat but little quickens the judgment.

(Puts a small plate before him. All the rest is cleared away.)

Sancho (throwing himself back in the chair, and looking at Carasco): What now is your name?

Carasco: I am Don Pedro Rezio D’Agnero. I took my doctor’s degree at the University of Ossuna.

Sancho: Then, doctor, whatever you call yourself, get out of my sight this very minute or by my oath I’ll take a cudgel and so use it that there will not be one of your profession left in the island! (Gets up.) Quit this or I will take this chair I am sitting on and fling it at your head! (Carasco goes back hurriedly. To servants): Give me food, I say! Are you expecting to see me nourish myself taking up grapestones on the point of a fork? Do you want me to leave my bones here in this island? Give me food, or I’ll give back the government. For an office that will not find a man in victuals is not worth two beans!

(A loaf of bread is put before him and he seizes and devours it.)

Chancellor: There are cases waiting to be heard, your excellency—a tailor to lay his case before you.

Sancho: A strange thing a man of business would not know such things should not have jurisdiction over the time that is spent in eating and drinking! What does the tailor want?

Chancellor: He says, your excellency, a stingy man came to him with a piece of cloth, and asked if there was enough in it for the makings of a cap. He said there was, and the man thought to get more than the one out of him, and went on asking could he make two or three till he came to five, and the tailor let him have his way. And when they were made, there were five sure enough, but they would but go on his four fingers and his thumb. (Holds up his hand with the five caps): And now he refuses to pay for the making, seeing they are of no use to him.

Sancho: I can give you that judgment while you’d snuff a candle. Let the miser lose the caps, and the tailor his work, and let the caps be confiscated and given to whoever they will fit.

Chancellor: There is another case waiting.

Sancho: Tell it out then.

Chancellor: It is a very hard one. There is a certain river, and over the river there is a bridge, and at the head of the bridge a gallows. Now the law of that place is that whoever passes over the bridge must first take an oath where and on what business he is going. If he swears true they will let him pass, but if he tells a lie he must be hanged without any remission. It has happened that a certain man having taken the oath, swore by the oath he had taken, he was going to die on the gallows. But the judge says: “If we let this man pass through, he will have sworn a lie, and by the law he ought to die. But if we hang him he ought to go free, as he swore the truth that he was going to die on that way, and so by the same law he ought to go free.” And so having heard of your excellency’s high understanding, they have sent me to beseech your lordship to give your opinion on so intricate and doubtful a case.

Sancho: That is plain enough. Let them let pass that part of the man that told the truth, and hang that part that told the lie.

Chancellor: But then they would cut the man in two parts and he would die.

Sancho: Then tell these gentlemen who sent you that since the reasons for condemning him and acquitting him are equal, they should let him pass free. For it is a precept given me by my master, Don Quixote, before I set out for this island, that when justice happens to be in the least doubt, I should incline and lean to the side of mercy. And God has brought it to my mind at this very moment where it comes in so pat.

Chancellor: It does so. Lycurgus himself, who gave laws to the Macedonians, could not have given a better judgment. And let us have no more business to-day. And I will give orders that his Excellency the Governor shall dine now to his satisfaction.

Sancho: That is good news. Let us have fair play. Let me eat my fill, and you may bring me cases and questions as thick as you please, and I’ll despatch them while you’d snuff a candle.

(A dish is being put before him when a horn blows.)

1st Page (rushing in): The enemy is coming! The enemies of the Governor of the Island! (Goes off.)

(Noise and shouts outside.)

2nd Page (rushing in): Arm, arm, your excellency! Take arms! A whole host of your enemies have landed. We are destroyed, unless you put them down and save us! (Runs off.)

(Noise increases.)

1st Page (returning): Arm, arm yourself, or you will be killed, and the whole of us with you!

Sancho: What have I to do with arming? I am not used to those hurly burlies!

2nd Page (returning with arms, bag, etc.): Come out, sir! Be our captain, and our leader!

Carasco: It is your place to lead us as our governor!

1st Page: Lead us on! Encourage us!

(They tie a clumsy buckler on him; he cannot walk.)

Sancho: I cannot stir! I am hindered by these ropes!

1st Page: Fie, sir! It is fear more than the ropes that hinders you. For shame, sir! Bestir yourself! It is late.

2nd Page: The enemy increases! The danger presses! Here is a helmet.

(They put the bag over his head and tie it. They ill-use him, making game of him, and then drag him out. The ducal party take off their disguises.)

Duke: Ha, ha! It seems to me Sancho is the wisest judge since Solomon.

Duchess: Poor Sancho. It went to my heart not letting him enjoy his food. But we’ll make up for it bye and bye! He shall have such a supper as never was seen.

Duke: You had better do away with these things. The Don will be coming in.

(Servants move table, gather up costumes, dishes, etc., and go.)

Duchess: Oh, you haven’t heard yet of all the fun the girls had with him while we were settling out this island for Sancho. They had left a little lute in his room, and he found it by the window, and began to sing in his poor hoarse voice a love song to his Dulcinea.

Duke: Ha, ha! I should have liked to hear that.

Duchess: It was just the usual thing. (Sings.)

Duke: I think indeed he never looked at any other woman.

Duchess: Perhaps that is why they played the trick on him. They let down a rope to the open window, and pushed in a sack full of cats——

Duke: Why cats?

Duchess: Oh, just for fun—they had bells tied to their tails. I wish I had not missed it—the girls nearly died with laughter.

Duke: I’m afraid that was going rather too far.

Duchess: Oh, he will never bear malice. He will think it was all an enchantment. Hush! I see his housekeeper coming back——

Housekeeper (coming in): I ask pardon my noble lord and lady for pushing in on you. I have no one to draw to but yourselves.

Duchess: Oh, tell me what is the matter. Have you any complaint to make?

Housekeeper: It is not for myself I have any complaint to make, but for my master.

Duchess: I hope he has not sent you to complain?

Housekeeper: He has not. He spoke no word. He did but lay himself down on the bed with a deep sigh. You couldn’t knock a smile out of him. There has gone from him his liveliness and his strength.

Duke: What! Is he ill? He was quite well an hour ago.

Housekeeper: It is no illness, sir, sent upon him by God. But he was greatly tossed. There are some in this house that have done a great wrong to him. To treat him in the way they did is a disgrace to the world.

Duke: I am sorry to hear that.

Duchess: I suppose it was that jest with the cats.

Housekeeper: A cat pent up in a room and frightened will turn to a tiger. And Sancho that should be there to guard him being gone as governor—God save the mark! Well, there’s One above that rubs the thunder, if here they give him no fair play.

Duke: Who are you speaking of?

Housekeeper: Some bold girls in your lordship’s house.

Duchess: Oh, I am sorry if they went too far.

Housekeeper: I will tell you ma’am, for you are not haughty like town ladies, but treat people more upon the level. I would say nothing if he met with cruelty upon the road in some of his encounters and bangs. But in a big gentleman’s house, that was no fitting thing to do.

Duke (to Duchess): I am vexed about this. You should not have encouraged that trick.

Duchess (taking Housekeeper’s hand): Say no more about it. I will see that these girls are punished and made repent.

Housekeeper: I am thankful to you, ma’am. You are a good plain humble lady. Let me be buried with such ladies as these!

(Housekeeper goes.)

Duenna (coming in): Here is his excellency coming, Sancho Panza. He lost his senses for a while, through a fall he got when they pushed him down the steps.

Duchess (clapping hands): He will think he got through the journey here during a trance! I long to hear his account of the mock attack on the island.

(Sancho coming in bows to them gravely.)

Duchess: Welcome, welcome Governor Sancho! I am afraid you were given a rough end to your government by these rebels. We must manage things better for you next time. What can we do for you now?

Sancho: All I ask of your grace is to be allowed to go back to my old way of life.

Duchess: Oh, no, we will make all pleasant for you here.

Duke: You must try your hand at another government.

Sancho: I was not born to be a governor, or to defend cities. I better understand how to plough and to dress vines than to give laws and judgments. I have had enough of mounting upon the towers of pride and ambition. Naked I came into the world, and naked I am. Without a penny I went into that government and without a penny I come out. I return to walk upon plain ground with a plain foot and to take the spade, take the scythe, and go into the field like a gentleman.

Duke: I am afraid you have not been well treated, Sancho, but this will not happen again.

Sancho: My respects to you my Lord Duke, but jests that hurt are no jests. These are not tricks to be played twice. I say no more though I could. All I will ask is a little barley for Dapple my ass, and a handful of bread and cheese for the road. (Turns away.)

Duchess: Oh, what will Don Quixote say to this!

Carasco (coming in gravely): Your Grace, he asks leave to come in.

Duchess: Why, bring him in at once. (Carasco and Sancho go out together.)

Duke: I am sorry about Sancho. That adventure turned out too heavy and too hard.

Quixote (coming in leaning on Carasco and Sancho): I am come to ask on my own behalf to go on my way.

Duke: I hope, sir, nothing has happened to offend you.

Quixote: I was not born for this idle life, I would go out on the road again.

Duchess: Oh, you are not fit for it. You look weary. Your cheeks are pale.

Quixote: I thank your grace, but I have committed a great fault, spending idle days for which I must give my account to God.

Duchess (taking his hand): We will do all we can to please you. There will be no more romping and teasing. It was never meant to annoy. I promise you comfort and ease.

Quixote: Freedom is best. It is one of the best gifts heaven has bestowed upon men. The treasures that the earth encloses or the sea covers are not to be compared with it. Life may and ought to be risked for liberty as well as for honour. I have had a fine lodging; I have had banquets here. But the obligation of returning favours received are ties that obstruct the free agency of the mind. I will go back to my own poor place. (He reels and catches at back of a chair.)

Duchess: Oh, do not leave us in this way! I will do all that is possible for your healing and ease.

Quixote (to Sancho faintly): Lead me home,—to my house—for I think I am not very well.

Duchess: Oh, stay! Forgive us all and forgive me! I never meant to hurt you. Stay and I will care you myself better than any other one could do! (She takes hold of his hand.)

Quixote: I hear someone speaking as through a dream—Lead me home.

Sancho: That’s right, sir. You got your own scourge. Come leave this rambling among strange places and strangers.

Duchess: Oh, say some word of kindness—say that you forgive me! I was thoughtless—that was all—I will not be so foolish any more. Tell me you will not think harshly of me. Keep some kind thought of me—say some kind word!

Quixote (to Sancho): My strength is failing. I think I will not fight again.

Duchess: Just say one comfortable word!

Quixote (standing straight up and speaking with difficulty): It is not fitting that my weakness should discredit the truth (calls out)—Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world!

Curtain

NOTE TO SANCHO’S MASTER

Sancho’s Master was first produced at the Abbey Theatre, on March 14, 1927, with this cast:—

For many years, I think ever since I began playwriting, I have had a desire to write one on Cervantes’ great theme. Once, in The Golden Apple I tried to lay its ghost in the Prince seeking a fabulous cure outside the bounds of nature, and his servant groaning and grunting after him, encumbered by reason and bodily fear. But the desire was not altogether quenched, and at last the play has had to be made nearer to Cervantes’ written word.

Quixote’s story belongs to the world, and some of us have whispered his name, fitting it to one or another dreamer who seeks to realise the perfect in a community not ready for the Millenium, and where he is likely to meet with anger that strikes or ridicule that scorches, or to have the word flung at him that was flung by Festus at St. Paul.

The first act of this play should be severe in tone, the scene is the room of an ascetic. In the Abbey Theatre production the walls were a dull red arras, the furniture a long blue table and two blue chairs, the decoration a pair of crossed swords and two heroic portraits. A window, a book-case, a hanging map (or almanack) and a chest are essential. In the second act it will be right to consider the well as the only essential thing, and to convey the idea of the wood as best one can with curtains or set pieces—it all depends on the size of the stage and the size of the producer’s purse. The third act should be in strong contrast to the simplicity of Don Quixote’s room in the first act. At the Abbey Theatre we used hangings with figures painted in dull colours and a coloured floor-cloth, but something more gorgeous might be used so long as it does not take away from the colour of the bright dresses of the Duchess and her ladies. The only furniture necessary in the first scene of this act is a couch. At the end of this scene the curtain falls for a moment, and when it rises the Duke and Duchess, the Duennas and Carasco are seen re-arranging the room to represent the Island of Barataria—placing a table and chair for Sancho’s dinner, and fitting on their disguises. In plays like this and in “The Would-Be Gentleman” it seems a safe rule to have nothing on the stage which is not essential to the action of the play—the well, the table, the chairs; and no ornament which does not comment on the play—the crossed swords, the portraits. And, certainly, the less ornament the better.

L. R.

PRESS OPINION

“Lady Gregory is the latest dramatist to try to put the marvellous creation of Cervantes upon the stage, and she has succeeded where so many, writing in various languages, have failed, in giving us most of the fun of ‘Don Quixote,’ while preserving the nobility, the lovableness of the ‘Knight of the Doleful Countenance.’

“When the last curtain had fallen the packed audience called for the author. It was no conventional observance of a first-night custom. They wanted to let Lady Gregory know that they were pleased; that they had enjoyed her latest addition to the Abbey triumphs as much as they were borne away by last week’s ‘Rising of the Moon,’ which she wrote just twenty years ago. When Lady Gregory came on, the house rocked with enthusiasm.

“The play is an altogether unexpected adaptation of the ‘Don Quixote’ story. We started off with the hero, physically worn out by an attack of fever, and beginning his adventures, not because he is mentally unhinged by the reading of tales of knight errantry and enchantment, but because he is a great human man, whose whole soul revolts against injustice that is left unchecked in the world. In the last scene of the last act we find the touch of the Irish dramatist; for Lady Gregory has portrayed him as a man broken by ridicule. She knows that you can do what you like with the Irishman, so long as you do not make him a laughing-stock for silly men and women who are incapable of serious thought. This play is ‘Don Quixote’ in form, but is universal in its application; and it was played last night to carry its appeal into the sensibility even of those of the audience who have but the most hazy conception of what Cervantes aimed at in his masterpiece.”

—Irish Times.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

A cover was created for this eBook and is placed in the public domain.

[The end of Three Last Plays: Sancho's Master by Lady Gregory]