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3 There seems to be no information about this work, which has probably been lost; there is speculation that an interlude called La Perendeca, published in 1663 by Agustín Moreto, may be an adaptation of the one Cervantes had in mind.

5 A satirical work in verse written during the reign of Enrique IV (1454–1474), it was widely circulated and immensely popular.

6 This was never published, and if Cervantes in fact wrote it, the work has been lost.

1 Famous legislators of ancient Sparta and Athens, respectively.

2 The reference is to a well-known popular tale.

3 The second line, in Italian, closes part I of Don Quixote.

4 The first poet is Luis Barahona de Soto, who wrote Las lágrimas de Angélica (The Tears of Angelica); the second is Lope de Vega, who wrote La hermosura de Angélica (The Beauty of Angelica).

5 Subsequent to the publication of part II, both Góngora and Quevedo wrote satires of the epic of Charlemagne, including the love of Roland and Angelica, which had been so popular in the early Renaissance.

1 The honorific don or doña was supposed to be used only with specific ranks of nobility, though many people added the title to their names without having any right to it.

2 See note 6, chapter IX, part I, for a discussion of the Moorish “author’s” name.

1 Sansón is the Spanish equivalent of Samson.

3 Part I had been printed three times in Madrid (twice in 1605, once in 1608), twice in Lisbon (1605), twice in Valencia (1605), twice in Brussels (1607, 1611), and once in Milan (1610) when Cervantes probably wrote these lines. It did not appear in Barcelona until 1617 (when the first and second parts were printed together for the first time) or in Antwerp until 1673 (it is assumed that Cervantes wrote Antwerp instead of Brussels). All of these editions are in Spanish; the first translation of the book (into English, by Thomas Shelton) appeared in London in 1612.

4 Alonso de Madrigal, bishop of Avila, an immensely prolific writer of the fifteenth century.

5 A line from Horace’s Ars poetica: “From time to time even Homer nods.”

6 “The number of fools is infinite.”

1 This incident appears in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.

2 The medieval battle cry of Spanish Christians engaged in combat with Muslims.

3 In Cervantes’s day, the redondilla was a five-line stanza, and the décima was composed of two redondillas.

1 The original, by Cide Hamete Benengeli, is in Arabic. In part I, a translator was hired in the market in Toledo; his translation is the history of Don Quixote described by the bachelor in part II.

2 Teresa has the proverb backward. It should be “Where kings go laws follow.”

3 The allusion is to a ballad about Doña Urraca’s desire to go wandering.

1 “Apportioning the sun” (partir el sol) was the arrangement of combatants in a tourney so that the sun would not shine in anyone’s eyes; “slashing to bits” is Cervantine wordplay.

2 The stigmatizing hood and robe that those accused by the Inquisition were obliged to wear.

3 A kind of black stone that once was used to test the purity of gold or silver by rubbing the stone with the metal and analyzing the streak left behind.

4 Garcilaso de la Vega (1503–1536), the great Renaissance poet, perfected the Petrarchan style in Spanish.

1 The housekeeper’s statement is based on her confusing aventura (“adventure”) with ventura (“happiness,” “luck,” and “fortune” are the relevant meanings). I’ve translated ventura as “venture” in order to establish the connection with “adventure,” though a better word would probably be “fortune.”

2 This was a prayer to cure toothache.

3 A secondary meaning for bachiller (the holder of a bachelor’s degree) is “a person who babbles or chatters.” Cervantes plays with the two meanings of the word.

4 With this sentence, Don Quixote again uses a more distant form of address with Sancho in order to indicate his displeasure; he does not return to less formal address until he speaks