• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte,” he replied.

“And is it finished?” asked Don Quixote.

“How can it be finished,” he responded, “if my life isn’t finished yet? What I’ve written goes from my birth to the moment when they sentenced me to the galleys this last time.”

“Then you have been there before?” said Don Quixote.

“To serve God and the king, I’ve already spent four years on the galleys, and I know the taste of the hardtack and the overseer’s whip,” responded Ginés. “And I’m not too sorry to go there, because I’ll have time to finish my book, for I still have lots of things to say, and on the galleys of Spain there’s more leisure than I’ll need, though I don’t need much for what I have to write because I know it by heart.”

Ginés, admirable miscreant, is a demonic parody of Cervantes himself, who had served five years in Algerian slavery and whose total Don Quixote became nearly unfinishable. The death of Cervantes came only a year after the publication of the second part of the great saga. Doubtless, Cervantes regarded Lope de Vega as his own demonic shadow, which is made clearer in the magnificent assault upon Master Pedro’s puppet show. The picaroon Ginés follows the general law of part II, which is that everyone of consequence either has read part I or is aware that he was a character in it. Master Pedro evades identity with Ginés, but at the high cost of witnessing another furious assault by the Knight of the Woeful Face. But this comes just after Master Pedro is strongly identified with Lope de Vega:

The interpreter said nothing in reply but went on, saying:

“There was no lack of curious eyes, the kind that tend to see everything, to see Melisendra descend from the balcony and mount the horse, and they informed King Marsilio, who immediately gave orders to sound the call to arms; and see how soon this is done, and how the city is flooded with the sound of the bells that ring from all the towers of the mosques.”

“No, that is wrong!” said Don Quixote. “Master Pedro is incorrect in the matter of the bells, for the Moors do not use bells but drums and a kind of flute that resembles our flageolet, and there is no doubt that ringing bells in Sansueña is a great piece of nonsense.”

This was heard by Master Pedro, who stopped the ringing and said:

“Your grace should not concern yourself with trifles, Señor Don Quixote, or try to carry things so far that you never reach the end of them. Aren’t a thousand plays performed almost every day that are full of a thousand errors and pieces of nonsense, and yet are successful productions that are greeted not only with applause but with admiration? Go on, boy, and let them say what they will, for as long as I fill my purse, there can be more errors than atoms in the sun.”

“That is true,” replied Don Quixote.

When Don Quixote assaults the puppet show, Cervantes assaults the popular taste that had preferred the theater of Lope de Vega to his own:

And Don Quixote, seeing and hearing so many Moors and so much clamor, thought it would be a good idea to assist those who were fleeing; and rising to his feet, in a loud voice he said:

“I shall not consent, in my lifetime and in my presence, to any such offense against an enamored knight so famous and bold as Don Gaiferos. Halt, you lowborn rabble; do not follow and do not pursue him unless you wish to do battle with me!”

And speaking and taking action, he unsheathed his sword, leaped next to the stage, and with swift and never before seen fury began to rain down blows on the crowd of Moorish puppets, knocking down some, beheading others, ruining this one, destroying that one, and among many other blows he delivered so powerful a downstroke that if Master Pedro had not stooped, crouched down, and hunched over, he would have cut off his head more easily than if it had been so much marzipan. Master Pedro cried out, saying:

“Your grace must stop, Señor Don Quixote, and realize that the ones you are overthrowing, destroying, and killing are not real Moors but only pasteboard figures. Sinner that I am,