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11 The Provençal story of Pierres de Provence and the beautiful Magalona was extremely popular in the sixteenth century; its Spanish translation was published in 1519.

12 These lines were cited previously, in chapter IX.

13 A Castilian knight of Portuguese descent who served under Juan II.

15 Don Fernando de Guevara was also cited in the Crónica de Juan II.

16 In 1434, with the permission of Juan II, Suero Quiñones, for the love of his lady, jousted with sixty-eight challenging knights at what is called the Honorable Pass.

17 An encounter that was also cited in the Crónica de Juan II.

18 Turpin is the fictitious author of a chronicle about Charlemagne.

1 This detail seems comically incongruous, yet picking one’s teeth after a meal was so common during the Renaissance that it was employed as a kind of trope for the necessary deceptions of genteel poverty, for example in Lazarillo de Tormes, when the hungry gentleman walks down the street wielding a toothpick to indicate that he has eaten.

1 In the first edition, the character is called Rosa twice and Roca once; subsequent editions, including many modern ones, call him Roca; in the first English, French, and Italian translations, which are cited by Martín de Riquer, Shelton calls him “Vincente of the Rose,” Oudin calls him “Vincent de la Roque,” and Franciosini calls him “Vincenzio della Rosa.”

2 The identities of these two men are not known; according to Martín de Riquer, it is possible that the manuscript read “Garci Lasso,” who was cited earlier, in chapter XLIX, with García de Paredes.

3 In Spanish, as in many other languages, varying degrees of deference, distance, familiarity, intimacy, and significant class distinctions can be shown by the form of address, either second or third person, singular or plural.

4 Arcadia was a region of the Peloponnesus where classical and Renaissance authors frequently located their pastoral novels; two important works of this extremely popular genre, by Sannazaro and Lope de Vega, were entitled La Arcadia, and Cervantes himself published a pastoral novel called La Galatea.

2 Only seventeen days had passed since Don Quixote’s second sally.

3 As indicated in an earlier note in chapter VII, there is a good amount of variation in the name of Sancho’s wife.

4 These are the horses of Orlando and Reinaldos de Montalbán. It should be noted that this sonnet, the kind called caudato in Italian, has an extra tercet.

5 The line, from Orlando furioso, should read, Forse altri canterà con miglior plettro (“Perhaps another will sing in a better style”), and is cited by Cervantes in the first chapter of the second part of the novel.

1 Don Pedro Fernández Ruiz de Castro (1576–1622), seventh count of Lemos, was the viceroy of Naples from 1610 to 1616. He was patron to several writers, including Cervantes, who dedicated to him the Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels) in 1613, the Comedias y entremeses (Plays and Interludes) in 1615, the second part of Don Quixote, also in 1615, and Persiles y Sigismunda (a “Byzantine” novel) in 1616, five days before Cervantes’s death.

2 In 1614, what is generally known as the “false Quixote” appeared in Tarragona. Its title was The Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha; its author has never been identified, though the book was published under the name of “Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, a native of the town of Tordesillas.” Cervantes apparently learned of its publication as he was writing chapter LIX of the authentic second part.

1 Despite his disclaimer, in his prologue Cervantes obviously is responding to the prologue of the “false Quixote.” The “greatest event” to which Cervantes refers is the battle of Lepanto, where he was wounded.

2 An allusion to Lope de Vega; according to Avellaneda’s prologue, Lope was unjustly attacked by Cervantes in the first part of Don Quixote; the protestations that follow here are pointedly disingenuous, for despite his being a priest, Lope de Vega’s