1. According to a medieval legend, the wounds of a murder victim would bleed in the presence of the killer.
2. The reference is to Tulia, the wife, not the daughter, of the Roman king Tarquinus the Proud.
1. There is a Yanguas in the modern province of Soria and another in the province of Segovia; in the first edition, however, Cervantes calls the drovers “Galicians.” For the sake of clarity, I have called them “Yanguesans,” which is how they are referred to in part II.
2. Sancho misremembers the name (Fierabrás) associated with the healing potion.
3. The humor here stems from wordplay based on costas (“costs”) and costillas (“ribs”).
4. The “merry god” is Bacchus.
5. Cervantes erroneously describes the city entered by Silenus as having one hundred gates, which refers to Egyptian Thebes; Silenus rode into Thebes in Boeotia, which had seven gates.
1. A span is approximately eight inches.
2. Sancho is mistaken (or lying): he and Don Quixote have been traveling for three days.
3. According to Martín de Riquer, muledrivers were usually Moriscos, and Cervantes is suggesting a connection between this character and Cide Hamete Benengeli.
4. A book of chivalry based on an earlier French poem and published in Spanish in 1513.
5. A figure who appeared in ballads and in a novel of chivalry published in 1498.
1. The phrase recalls the opening of a traditional ballad about El Cid.
2. A coin of little value, worth about one-sixth of a maravedí.
3. Tossing a dog in a blanket was a Carnival diversion.
4. An ancient Spanish coin of very little value.
1. The reference is to Amadís of Greece, the great-grandson of Amadís of Gaul.
2. The Greek and Roman name for Sri Lanka. The names of the warriors in this section are parodies of the kinds of grandiloquent names typical of novels of chivalry (Alifanfarón is roughly equivalent to “Alibombast,” Pentapolínto “Pentaroller”). The listing of combatants appears to be a brief detour by Cervantes into the world of the epic poem.
3. The names in this section suggest ludicrous associations: Laurcalco, “Laurelfacsimile”; Micocolembo, “Monkeywedge”; Brandabarbarán de Boliche, “Brandabarbarian of Ninepins”; Timonel de Carcajona, “Helmsman of Guffawjona”; Nueva Vizcaya, “New Basqueland”; Miulina, “Mewlina”; Alfeñiquén del Algarbe, “Mollycoddle of Babble”; Pierres Papín, “Pierres Bonbon”; Espartafilardo del Bosque, “Esparragrass of the Forest.”
4. In heraldry, these are blue and white cups, or bells, that fit together perfectly.
5. The legend, Rastrea mi Suerte, is ambiguous and can be interpreted in several ways, including “Look into my fate,” “Delve into my fate,” “My fate creeps along,” and “Follow [the trail of] my fate.”
6. Don Quixote begins his description with ancient and foreign references; in the second half of his evocation, beginning with “In this other host…” he alludes, for the most part, to Iberian rivers.
7. The Spanish word peladilla can mean either “pebble” or “sugared almond.” In the next sentence, Cervantes confirms the wordplay by using almendra, directly equivalent to “almond.”
8. Andrés Laguna, an eminent sixteenth-century physician, translated and commented on the medical treatise by Dioscorides, a Greek physician of the first century C.E.
1. Sancho does not remember the name “Mambrino” and confuses it with malandrín (“scoundrel” or “rascal”).
2. The reference is to soldiers who wore shirts of a specific color over their armor during night battles so they would not be mistaken for the enemy.
3. All of these are fictional except for the Knight of the Griffon, a count who lived during the reign of Philip II.
4. This is part of a phrase established by the Council of Trent for excommunicating those who committed violence against a member of the clergy.
5. The incident is narrated in several ballads about El Cid (Rodrigo de Vivar, also called Ruy Díaz).
1. The Horn is the constellation of Ursa Minor; Sancho refers to a method of telling the time by the stars in which the person would extend his arms in the shape of a cross and calculate the hour by determining the position of the Horn in relationship to his arms.
2. Sancho is alluding to Cato the Censor, or Cato Censorino, who was popularly considered to be a source of proverbs and sayings; in the process, he mispronounces his title, calling him zonzorino, which suggests “simpleminded.”
3. A term used to describe those who had no Jewish or Muslim ancestors, as opposed to more recent converts (the “New Christians); being an “Old Christian” was considered a significant attribute following the forced conversions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
4. For the next few sentences, Don Quixote uses a more formal mode of address with Sancho (a change that cannot be rendered in modern English) to indicate extreme displeasure and his desire for distance between them.
5. Latin for “in the Turkish manner.”
6. This is the second half of a proverb: “It doesn’t matter if the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher: it will be bad for the pitcher.”
1. An enchanted helmet worn by Reinaldos de Montalbán.
2. Sancho is citing part of a proverb—“May it please God that this is oregano and not caraway”—which warns against fool’s gold (oregano was considered more valuable than caraway).
3. Castor, a strong-smelling secretion of the beaver’s sexual glands, was used in making perfume.
4. Vulcan made armor for Mars, but not a helmet.
5. Sancho means “Mambrino.”
6. An idiom, used earlier, that means to flee an unexpected danger.
7. A ritual in which cardinals change their hoods on Easter Sunday.
8. It should be noted that Don Quixote’s tale is a perfect plot summary of a novel of chivalry.
9. Under certain circumstances, it was a privilege of the gentry to collect five hundred sueldos as recompense for damages or injuries.
1. The speech of the galley slaves is peppered with underworld slang. Here, for example, the convict says that his sentence was a hundred lashes plus a term of three years in the galleys.
2. The allusion is to the public flogging and humiliation of convicted criminals.
3. There is a certain intentional confusion or ambiguity regarding “go-between” in the ensuing dialogue, where it alternately implies “matchmaker” and “procurer.”
4. A kind of metal collar placed under the chin, which prevented a prisoner from lowering his head.
5. Cervantes is alluding to the picaresque novel in Ginés’s discussion of his book, just as he suggests the pastoral in the story of Marcela. These genres, along with novels of chivalry, were the most popular forms of prose fiction in Spain during the sixteenth century.
6. A traditional expression that means, “Don’t go looking for trouble.”
1. Martín de Riquer faithfully follows the first edition of Don Quixote, published in 1605; the second edition, printed a few months later by Juan de la Cuesta, the same printer, introduces a brief passage here, indicating that Ginés de Pasamonte, who is also in the mountains, steals Sancho’s donkey. The thorny and ambiguous question of why Cervantes does not mention the theft of the donkey in the first edition (usually attributed to an author’s oversight or a printer’s error) is alluded to in the second part of Don Quixote, published in 1615.
2. By the third edition of Don Quixote, printed by Juan de la Cuesta, the references to Sancho’s donkey in the Sierra Morena had been deleted; here, for example, the revised text says that Sancho was on foot and carrying the donkey’s load, “thanks to Ginesillo de Pasamonte.”
3. A traditional expression that means “I don’t want things that can cause trouble.”
1. A lost play by Shakespeare, The History of Cardenio, was apparently based on Cardenio’s tale. An English translation of the first part of Don Quixote appeared only a fe
w years after its initial publication in 1605.
2. A promise of marriage was considered a legally binding contract.
3. This is the eleventh of the books about Amadís and his descendants.
4. Queen Madásima, a character in the Amadís of Gaul, did not have a romantic relationship with the surgeon Elisabat.
1. The knight’s penance is a favorite topic in the books of chivalry. Beltenebros is the name taken by Amadís during his penance; it suggests “Dark Beauty” or “Beautiful Dark.”
2. This was the popular name for Aesop among the uneducated.
3. This is Sancho’s misunderstanding of the name Elisabat.
4. Peña Pobrecan be translated as “Poor Rock” or “Bare Rock” or, to retain the alliteration, “Mount Mournful.”
5. The figure of Opportunity was traditionally represented as bald except for one lock of hair, which, like the proverbial brass ring, one had to grasp and hold on to.
6. The hippogryph, a winged horse, and Frontino, the horse of Ruggiero, Bradamante’s lover, appear in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso; Frontino is also mentioned by Boiardo in Orlando innamorato.
7. Over the years, the question of exactly when Sancho’s donkey was stolen has been a matter of some controversy among Cervantine scholars. According to the first edition, published in 1605, this is the initial indication that a theft has taken place. In the second edition, however, published a few months after the first, a passage inserted in chapter XXIII states that Ginés de Pasamonte, the galley slave, steals the donkey while Sancho is sleeping. Martín de Riquer, editor of the text on which this translation is based, adheres consistently to the first edition, citing the added passage in a footnote but not including it in the body of the text. In brief, then, through an oversight of Cervantes or the printer, Juan de la Cuesta, the first edition does not prepare the reader for the fact that the donkey has been stolen; despite subsequent corrections, in the second part of Don Quixote, published in 1615, Cervantes alludes to this omission in chapter III and apparently accepts criticism of the omission as valid.
8. This is Sancho’s corruption of a Latin phrase in the service for the dead: Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio.
9. In the passage regarding the theft of the donkey, which was inserted in chapter XXIII in the second edition, Don Quixote offers Sancho his own donkeys as compensation for his loss.
10. In an apparent oversight, Cervantes wrote “Perseus” instead of “Theseus.”
1. This phrase was considered irreverent, and in the second edition it was replaced by “And for a rosary he took some large galls from a cork tree, which he strung together and used as prayer beads.”
1. A Visigoth who ruled Spain in the seventh century (672–680).
1. This appears to be a reference to the duke of Osuna.
1. In the first edition, this was the epigraph for chapter XXX, while the one for chapter XXIX appeared before chapter XXX. In other words, the epigraphs were reversed.
2. The kind of gentle horse normally ridden by women and referred to frequently in novels of chivalry; Cervantes uses the term for comic effect since Dorotea is riding a mule.
3. In other words, Sancho will turn them into silver and gold.
4. Complutum was the Roman name for Alcalá de Henares, Cervantes’s birthplace.
5. Meona means “urinating frequently” and is often used to describe newborn infants.
1. In this context, religion signifies the order of chivalry.
2. Azote means “whip” or “scourge”; gigote is “fricassee” or “hash.”
3. The humor in Dorotea’s statement (comparable to her not being able to recall Don Quixote’s name) lies in the fact that Osuna is landlocked and that La Mancha is part of Spain, and not the reverse, as she implies.
4. This is the first reference, in either the first or second edition of the novel, to the theft of Don Quixote’s sword.
5. As indicated earlier, when he is extremely angry Don Quixote changes the way he addresses Sancho, moving from the second person singular to the more distant second person plural. This is the second time he has done so, and he maintains his irate distance until the end of the paragraph.
6. At this point, in the second edition, Ginés de Pasamonte reappears, riding Sancho’s donkey. Sancho begins to shout at him, calling him a thief, and Ginés runs away, leaving the donkey behind. Sancho is overjoyed, especially when Don Quixote says that this does not nullify the transfer of the three donkeys he had promised him earlier.
1. A fanega is approximately 1.6 bushels.
19. Don Alvaro de la Luna (1388?–1453), lord high constable (Condestable) of Castilla under Juan II, was considered the most powerful man of his time.
20. An allusion to a black servant of the duchess of Terranova, who knew so much Latin that he was given this nickname.
21. Amadís of Gaul was the hero of the most famous of the Renaissance novels of chivalry. He was the prototype of the perfect knight and perfect chivalric lover.
22. Peña Pobre (“Mount Mournful”) is where Amadís carried out his penance of love, later imitated by Don Quixote.
23. Another fictional knight from the literature of chivalry.
24. Oriana was the lady-love of Amadís.
25. An allusion to the idiom “to imitate Villadiego,” meaning to run away.
26. First published in 1499, the book commonly known as La Celestina is one of the great monuments of Renaissance literature in Spain.
27. Babieca was the name of the horse belonging to El Cid.
28. In Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque novel (1554), Lazarillo manages to steal wine from his blind master, who refuses to allow him to drink, by surreptitiously inserting a straw into the jug of wine.
2. As a sign of respect, the recipient of a letter from a person of high station touched it to his or her head before opening it.
3. A ruse allegedly used by Gypsies to make their animals run faster.
4. Sancho confuses the proverb, which ends: “…you can’t complain about the evil that happens to you.”
1 Written by Bernardo de Vargas, the book was published in 1545.
2 This novel was mentioned in the examination of Don Quixote’s library by the priest and the barber.
3 Published in 1580, this chronicle recounts the exploits of one of the most famous and successful officers to serve under the Catholic Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba (1453–1515) was called the Great Captain; his aide, Diego García de Paredes, was renowned for his enormous strength.
1 This is the first of what are called the interpolated novels (in contemporary terms, they are novellas) in the first part of Don Quixote; the story is derived from an episode in Canto 43 of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. There are indications in the second part of Don Quixote that Cervantes was criticized for these “interruptions” of the action.
2 Plutarch attributes the phrase to Pericles.
3 An Italian poet of the sixteenth century (1510–1568).
4 An allusion to the story, recounted in Orlando furioso, of a magic goblet that indicated if the women who drank from it were faithful.
5 Danae was confined in a tower by her father, King Acrisius, when an oracle stated that her son would kill him. Zeus transformed himself into a shower of gold, visited her, and fathered Perseus.
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