Chapter XLVIII. In which the canon continues on the subject of books of chivalry, with other things worthy of his wit

“It is just as your grace says, Señor Canon,” said the priest, “and for this reason those who have composed such books until now are all the more to be blamed, for they have paid no heed to any sound reasoning, nor to the art and rules by which they might have guided themselves and won the same fame in prose that the two princes of Greek and Latin poetry won in verse.”

“I myself, at least,” replied the canon, “have felt a certain temptation to write a book of chivalry, keeping in it all the points I have mentioned; and, if I am to confess the truth, I have more than a hundred pages written. And to test whether they came up to my own opinion of them, I have shown them to men who are fond of this kind of reading, learned and sensible men, and to other, ignorant ones, who care only for the pleasure of hearing nonsense, and from all of them I have had a pleasing approval; but, for all that, I have not gone on with it, both because it seems to me that I am doing something foreign to my profession, and because I see that the simple outnumber the prudent; and that, although it is better to be praised by the wise few than mocked by the foolish many, I do not wish to submit myself to the muddled judgment of the giddy public, to whom for the most part the reading of such books falls. But what most took it out of my hands, and even out of my mind, to finish it, was an argument I had with myself, drawn from the plays that are performed nowadays, and it went like this: ‘If those now in fashion, the invented ones as well as the historical, are all or most of them notorious nonsense, things without head or tail, and, for all that, the public listens to them with pleasure and holds and approves them as good, when they are so far from being so; and if the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say that so they must be, because so the public wants them and no other way; and that those that have a plan and follow the plot as art requires serve only for a handful of discerning people who understand them, while all the rest go hungry for any understanding of their art, and that it suits them better to earn their bread with the many than reputation with the few, then this will be the fate of a book of mine, after I have burned my eyebrows keeping the precepts I have mentioned, and I shall end up like the tailor at the corner, who sews for nothing and puts in his own thread.’ And, though I have sometimes tried to persuade the actors that they are mistaken in holding the opinion they hold, and that they will draw more people and win more fame by performing plays that keep to art than with the nonsensical ones, they are so attached to their opinion and so wedded to it that no reason or evidence will get them out of it. I remember saying to one of these stubborn fellows one day: ‘Tell me, do you not remember that a few years ago three tragedies were performed in Spain, composed by a famous poet of these kingdoms, which were such that they astonished, delighted, and held in suspense everyone who heard them, simple as well as wise, common people as well as the select, and those three alone brought the players more money than thirty of the best that have been made since?’ ‘No doubt,’ answered the manager I speak of, ‘your grace must mean La Isabela, La Filis, and La Alejandra.’ ‘Those are the ones I mean,’ I replied, ‘and see whether they did not keep the precepts of art well, and whether by keeping them they failed to seem what they were or to please the whole world. So the fault is not in the public, which asks for nonsense, but in those who do not know how to put on anything else. No, there was no nonsense in Ingratitude Avenged, nor was there any in La Numancia, nor was any found in The Merchant Lover, still less in The Friendly Enemy, nor in certain others that have been written by some intelligent poets, bringing renown to their authors and profit to the companies that played them.’ And I added other things to these, with which, as it seemed to me, I left him somewhat confused, but not satisfied or convinced enough to be brought out of his mistaken notion.”

“You have touched on a subject, Señor Canon,” said the priest at this point, “that has awakened in me an old grudge I bear against the plays now in fashion, as great as the one I bear against books of chivalry; for, whereas a play ought to be, as Tully thinks, a mirror of human life, an example of manners, and an image of the truth, those that are performed nowadays are mirrors of nonsense, examples of folly, and images of lewdness. In the subject we are discussing, could anything be more absurd than a child in swaddling clothes appearing in the opening scene of act one, and in the next scene appearing as a bearded man? And what greater nonsense than to paint us a valiant old man and a cowardly youth, a rhetorical lackey, a page who gives counsel, a king who is a porter, and a princess who is a scullery maid? Then what shall I say of the regard they pay to the time in which the actions they present can or could happen, except that I have seen a play whose first act began in Europe, its second in Asia, and its third ended in Africa, and, had there been four acts, the fourth would have ended in America, and so it would have been played in all four parts of the world? And if imitation is the chief thing a play must have, how is it possible for any middling understanding to be satisfied when, in a plot that is supposed to take place in the time of King Pepin and Charlemagne, the very man who plays the principal person in it is given out as the Emperor Heraclius, who carried the Cross into Jerusalem, and as the one who won the Holy Sepulcher, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when there were endless years between the one and the other; and, when the play is founded on something invented, to give it truths from history, and to mix into it bits of other things that happened to different persons at different times, and this not with any plausible design but with glaring errors wholly inexcusable? And the worst of it is that some ignorant folk call this perfection, and say that wanting anything else is hunting for dainties. And what if we come to the religious plays? What false miracles they invent in them, what apocryphal and misunderstood things, attributing to one saint the miracles of another! And even in the secular ones they dare to work miracles, with no more respect or consideration than their thinking that such a miracle and stage effect, apariencia, as they call it, will go well there, so that ignorant people will marvel and come to the play; and all of this is to the prejudice of the truth and the discredit of history, and even to the shame of Spanish wits; for foreigners, who keep the laws of the drama very scrupulously, take us for barbarous and ignorant when they see the absurdities and nonsense of the plays we make. And it would not be excuse enough for this to say that the chief purpose well-ordered commonwealths have in permitting public plays is to entertain the community with some honest recreation and divert it at times from the ill humors that idleness tends to breed; and that, since this is achieved by any play at all, good or bad, laws are unnecessary, and so is constraining those who compose and perform them to make them as they ought to be made, since, as I have said, what is sought by them is achieved by any of them. To which I would answer that this end would be achieved far better, beyond all comparison, by good plays than by those that are not; for after hearing a play that is skillful and well ordered, the listener would come away cheered by the jests, instructed by the serious parts, amazed at the events, made wiser by the speeches, forewarned by the tricks, made shrewd by the examples, angry at vice and in love with virtue; for all these feelings a good play must awaken in the mind of whoever hears it, however rustic and dull he may be; and it is of all impossibilities impossible that a play with all these qualities should not cheer and entertain, satisfy and please, far more than one that lacks them, as for the most part those that are commonly performed now do lack them. And the poets who compose them are not to blame for this, for some of them know very well where they go wrong, and know perfectly what they ought to do; but, since plays have become a salable commodity, they say, and they say truly, that the players would not buy them if they were not of that stamp; and so the poet tries to accommodate himself to what the player who is to pay him for his work asks of him. And that this is true may be seen in the many, indeed countless, plays composed by a most happy genius of these kingdoms, with such elegance, such grace, such polished verse, such good speeches, such grave sentences, and, in short, so full of eloquence and loftiness of style that his fame fills the world; and yet, because he wished to suit the taste of the players, not all of them have reached, as some have, the point of perfection they require. Others compose them so heedlessly that after they are performed the actors are obliged to flee and go into hiding, for fear of being punished, as they often have been, for having performed things to the prejudice of certain kings and the dishonor of certain families. And all these drawbacks would cease, and many more besides that I do not mention, if there were at court an intelligent and discerning person to examine all plays before they were performed (not only those to be put on at court, but all that anyone wished to perform in Spain), without whose approval, seal, and signature no magistrate in his town should allow any play to be performed; and in this way the actors would take care to send their plays to court, and could perform them safely, and those who compose them would look with more care and study at what they were doing, fearing to have their works pass through the rigorous examination of someone who understands the matter; and in this way good plays would be made and what is sought in them would be most happily achieved: the entertainment of the people, the good name of the wits of Spain, the profit and safety of the players, and the saving of the trouble of punishing them. And if the same person, or another, were given the charge of examining the books of chivalry newly composed, no doubt some might come out with the perfection your grace has described, enriching our language with the pleasing and precious treasure of eloquence, and causing the old books to be eclipsed by the light of the new ones as they came out, for the honest pastime not only of the idle but of the busiest; for the bow cannot always be kept bent, nor can human nature and weakness sustain itself without some lawful recreation.”

The canon and the priest had reached this point in their colloquy when the barber, riding ahead, came up to them and said to the priest:

“Here, Señor Licentiate, is the place I said was good for us to take our midday rest while the oxen had fresh and plentiful pasture.”

“So it seems to me,” answered the priest.

And when he told the canon what he meant to do, the canon decided to stay with them too, drawn by the charm of a beautiful valley that lay before their eyes. And, as much to enjoy it as to enjoy the conversation of the priest, to whom he was already growing attached, and to learn Don Quixote’s exploits in more detail, he ordered some of his servants to go to the inn, which was not far from there, and bring from it whatever there was to eat for all of them, for he had decided to take his rest in that place that afternoon; to which one of his servants answered that the sumpter mule with the provisions, which must have reached the inn by now, carried enough victuals that they need take nothing from the inn but barley.

“That being so,” said the canon, “take all the mounts there, and have the sumpter mule brought back.”

While this was going on, Sancho, seeing that he could speak to his master without the constant presence of the priest and the barber, whom he held in suspicion, went up to the cage in which his master was riding and said to him:

“Sir, to ease my conscience, I want to tell you what’s going on about this enchantment of yours; and it’s this: those two coming along here with their faces covered are the priest of our village and the barber; and I imagine they’ve hit on this scheme of carrying you off like this out of pure envy, because your grace gets ahead of them in doing famous deeds. Taking this truth, then, as given, it follows that you’re not enchanted, but bamboozled and befooled. To prove which, I want to ask you one thing; and if you answer me as I believe you will, you’ll lay your hand on this trick and see that you’re not enchanted, only turned in the head.”

“Ask what you will, Sancho, my son,” answered Don Quixote, “for I shall satisfy you and answer you to your heart’s content. And as for what you say, that those who go and come with us there are the priest and the barber, our fellow townsmen and acquaintances, it may well be that they seem to be the very men; but that they really and in fact are, that you must by no means believe. What you must believe and understand is that if they look like them, as you say, it must be that those who have enchanted me have taken on that appearance and likeness; for it is easy for enchanters to take on whatever shape they please, and they will have taken on those of these friends of ours to give you occasion to think what you think, and to set you in a labyrinth of fancies from which you could not find your way out, though you had the rope of Theseus. And they will also have done it to make me waver in my understanding and be unable to tell where this harm comes to me from; for if, on the one hand, you tell me that the barber and the priest of our village are with me, and, on the other, I see myself caged, and know of myself that no human strength, unless it were supernatural, could have sufficed to cage me, what would you have me say or think, except that the manner of my enchantment exceeds all I have read of in all the histories that deal with knights-errant who have been enchanted? So you may well set your mind at rest and be easy about believing that they are who you say, for they are those men as much as I am a Turk. And as for your wanting to ask me something, speak, for I will answer you, though you go on asking me from now till tomorrow.”

“Our Lady help me!” answered Sancho, with a great shout. “And is it possible that your grace is so thick in the skull and so short of brains that you can’t see that what I’m telling you is the plain truth, and that malice has more of a hand than enchantment in this prison and misfortune of yours? But, since that’s how it is, I want to prove to you plainly that you’re not enchanted. Otherwise, tell me, so may God get you out of this storm, and so may you find yourself in the arms of my lady Dulcinea when you least expect it…”

“Have done with conjuring me,” said Don Quixote, “and ask what you will; for I have told you already that I shall answer you with all exactness.”

“That’s what I ask,” replied Sancho, “and what I want to know is for you to tell me, without adding or taking away anything at all, but in all truth, as all those who profess arms are expected to tell it, and do tell it, as your grace professes them, under the title of knights-errant…”

“I say I shall lie in nothing,” answered Don Quixote. “Now finish asking, for truly you weary me with so many salvos, supplications, and preliminaries, Sancho.”

“I say I’m sure of my master’s goodness and truthfulness; and so, because it’s to the point in our story, I ask, speaking with respect, whether by any chance, since your grace has been caged and, as you think, enchanted in this cage, you’ve had the wish and the will to do your greater or lesser waters, as the saying goes.”

“I do not understand this doing of waters, Sancho; speak more plainly, if you want me to answer you straight.”

“Is it possible your grace doesn’t understand doing the lesser or greater waters? Why, at school they wean the boys on it. Well, then, let me tell you I mean whether you’ve had the wish to do what can’t be put off.”

“Ah, now I understand you, Sancho! And many times; and I have it even now. Get me out of this danger, for not everything is quite clean!”