Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes, Colin Teevan, Pablo Ley

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786822086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

Follow the dramatic tale of the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha, Don Quixote, and his comic adventures over land, sea and air in the search for an idealised world.
Accompanied by his loyal sidekick, Sancho Panza, and inspired by stories of daring deeds, Don Quixote sets out to recreate an imaginary world and to convince his family, friends, and all he meets of its reality. But this is no ordinary journey as he gallops through Seventeenth Century Spain, encountering a host of fantastical characters including star-crossed lovers, an army of giants, a cross-dressing priest, a royal duchess and even the devil himself.
Don Quixote opened at the West Yorkshire Playhouse's Quarry theatre in September 2007

Act One

PROLOGUE

NIECE: The reason for the unreason to which my reason is subjected so weakens my reason that it’s with reason I complain of your beauty.

CIDE HAMETE BENENGELI: In a village in La Mancha, the name of which I don’t recall, there lived a gentleman named Quixada or Quexada. He was one of those gentlemen who has a lance and a shield on the wall and a skinny nag in the stable. He was about fifty years old, his complexion was leathery and his bones were lean. He was an early riser and liked to hunt, but mostly he spent his time reading books of chivalry. So lost was he in his reading, from dusk to dawn, from sunrise to sunset, that his brains dried up like old beans in the sun, and he lost his mind. So that it seemed both reasonable and necessary, both for the sake of his honour and service to his state, to become a knight-errant. And so, early one July morning, having buckled on the rusty armour of his great-grandfather and decided to be enamoured of a lady, some peasant girl called Aldonza Lorenzos, whom he now called Dulcinea del Toboso, our knight, Don Quixote de La Mancha, left his home, mounted his charger Rocinante, and set off across the Manchegan plains in search of adventure.

THE LIBRARY

HOUSEKEEPER: Three days and not a sign of him, nor his old horse, nor his armour. Lord help us! As true as the death I owe God, those damned books of chivalry he’s always at have completely turned his mind.

NIECE: Do you know, father, my uncle used to spend two days and nights non-stop, reading and re-reading those god-awful books of misadventures? And when he’d done he’d throw the book away, grab his sword and start thrusting and slashing at the walls. Then, when he was tired, he’d say he’d killed four giants and the sweat that poured from him was the blood from the wounds he’d received. Then he’d drink a jug of cold water and come over calm, saying the water was a precious potion which the wise Flanflan, or somesuch, a magician friend of his, had brought him. You should burn those books like heretics.

PRIEST: Hear, hear! And with God’s help we shall not let one more day pass without trying them and sentencing them to the flames.

HOUSEKEEPER: Take this, your reverence, some hyssop and some holy water, and baptise the room so that none of the enchanters in these books can put a spell on us.

PRIEST: Master Nicolas, hand them to me one by one so we can consider their contents.

NIECE: Why should we pardon any? Throw them all out the window. Make a bonfire in the courtyard.

PRIEST: Amadis of Gaul. The first book of chivalry printed in Spain. It should be condemned as the founder of the vile sect.

BARBER NICOLAS: But I’ve heard it’s the best of the lot, so perhaps it should be pardoned.

PRIEST: Well said, Master Nicolas, let it be spared.

NIECE: But…?

PRIEST: For the present. What’s that one, next to it?

BARBER NICOLAS: The Exploits of Esplandian, the legitimate son of Amadis of Gaul. Are they all about Amadis and his family?

PRIEST: Out the window with the whole tribe of them.

BARBER NICOLAS: Yes.

NIECE: Yes! Yes!

HOUSEKEEPER: Give them here, then.

PRIEST: Who’s this mighty fellow?

BARBER NICOLAS: Don Olivante de Laura.

PRIEST: A silly and arrogant work. Into the courtyard with it!

BARBER NICOLAS: Part One of the Great History of the Spirited and Sporting Prince Felixmarte of Hyrcania and his Extraordinary Birth.

PRIEST: To the yard, I say, for the stiffness and dryness of his style.

HOUSEKEEPER: My pleasure, you reverence.

BARBER NICOLAS: The Knight Platir.

PRIEST: An old book, but age is no reason for clemency.

BARBER NICOLAS: The Knight of the Cross.

NIECE: Out!

BARBER NICOLAS: The Mirror of Chivalry.

NIECE: Out! Out! Out!

BARBER NICOLAS: Ludovico Ariosto.

PRIEST: I will not read Ariosto in any language but the original.

BARBER NICOLAS: Well this must be in Italian because it’s all Greek to me.

PRIEST: Show me? Bellisima!

NIECE: Burn them! Burn them all!

PRIEST: God help me! Tirante el Blanco! Not Tirante! This is the best book in the world. In this one knights eat and sleep, and die in their beds, and make their wills before dying. Sensible knights, reasonable knights, good knights.

NIECE: Good night to them all!

PRIEST: Take it home with you, Master Nicolas, and read it, and you will see what I say is true. What’s that one?

CIDE HAMETE BENENGELI: La Galatea, by Miguel de Cervantes.

PRIEST: Cervantes?

CIDE HAMETE BENENGELI: He was a friend of mine years ago, though I know he’s more versed in misfortune than in fiction. His book has a certain imagination. Perhaps in the future it will achieve the mercy it is denied now.

PRIEST: Set it aside.

BARBER NICOLAS: I’ll do that, your reverence.

PRIEST: Now wall up the book room so when your master comes to, he won’t be able to find them.

Enter DON QUIXOTE, he cannot find his library.

HOUSEKEEPER: What is it you’re looking for, your worship?

DON QUIXOTE: My library, good housekeeper, my books.

HOUSEKEEPER: What library? The Devil himself came and took it away.

NIECE: No, uncle, it wasn’t the Devil but a magician who came the night after the day you went out on the road in search of adventures. And when he arrived, he dismounted the serpent he rode and entered the room. What he did in there we don’t know, but after a while he left, filling the house with smoke. And when we went to see what he’d done we saw neither books nor room, but as he was leaving, he said in clear voice that because of a personal grudge he held against the owner of the books, he’d done mischief in that house that would be discovered by-and-by.

HOUSEKEEPER: He said his name was the Great Tortilla.

DON QUIXOTE: You are mocking me, housekeeper.

HOUSEKEEPER: I’m sorry, your worship.

DON QUIXOTE: He must have said Gazpacho. The Great Gazpacho.

HOUSEKEEPER: That was it. Because he said that this was only for starters.

DON QUIXOTE: Gazpacho is a powerful magician, and a great enemy of mine. He knows that at some point in the future I shall engage in single combat with a knight he favours, and that I’ll defeat him, and that he’ll be unable to prevent it. That’s why he’s done this. Any opportunity he has.

NIECE: We don’t doubt it, uncle, so, wouldn’t it be wiser to stay at home instead of roaming the wide world looking for trouble?

DON QUIXOTE: My dear niece, how little you understand! I shall pluck the beard of any man or wizard who so much as dreams he can touch a hair upon my head.

THE SQUIRE

Enter SANCHO with TERESA, SANCHICO and SANCHICA.

HOUSEKEEPER: Get out, you yard dog, we don’t need anyone leading our master astray again.

SANCHO PANZA: You old hag of a housekeeper! The only one doing any leading astray round here is your master. He’s the one who promised me an island.

NIECE: An island! I hope your island sticks in your fat throat and chokes you.

HOUSEKEEPER: That’s as may be, but you still can’t come in. Go govern your own home and stop trying to govern islands, you bladder of badness, you sack of sin.

DON QUIXOTE: It saddens me, Sancho, that you insist that it’s I who lures you away. Together shall we venture out, together shall we journey, together shall we share a single fortune and a single fate.

SANCHO PANZA: But a knight-errant should suffer the misfortunes, not his squire.

DON QUIXOTE: But what of ‘quando caput dolet’, Sancho?

SANCHO PANZA: Quando quappit what?

DON QUIXOTE: It means that when the head aches, the body hurts too. Since I am your lord and master, I am your head, so any misfortune that touches me will cause you pain, and vice versa.

SANCHO PANZA: (Mimicking.) ‘You must know, Sancho my friend, quando crappit donut…’

TERESA PANZA: Ever since you became a knight’s squire, Sancho, your talk is so fancy no one can understand you.

SANCHO PANZA: It’s enough that God understands me, wife. Besides, we’re not going to a wedding, but to travel the wide world to battle with monsters, dragons and giants.

TERESA PANZA: And I believe, husband, that squires errant don’t earn their bread for nothing. May the Lord deliver you from evil.

SANCHO PANZA: I swear if I’m not made governor of an island soon, let me drop down dead right here.

TERESA PANZA: The Devil take all governorships. The best sauce in the world is...