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PARTISAN REVIEW
Quixote's reluctance to accept confinement in age and circumstance, his
need to create an identity for himself which denies, or tries to deny , that
imprisonment is the source of his chivalric enterprise. And nearly all the char–
acters in the novel, and the form of the book as well , make similar assertions of
freedom , and with similar ambiguous unsuccess .
Even the priest and the barber, those embodiments of sanity (who
nonetheless adopt toles with immense energy in their efforts to "cure"
Quixote) are shown to be feebler and smaller versions of the lunatic
to
whom
they condescend:
They paid. . [Quixote] a visit at last , and found him siccing up in
bed, ... so lean and withered that he seemed ro be nothing but mum–
my-flesh.
. In the co urse oftheir conve rsation they happened ro discuss
the principles of statecraft-as they are called-and methods of govern–
ment, correcting this abuse and co ndemning that, reforming one cusrom
and abolishing another, each one of the three seccing up as a fresh legis–
laror, a modern Lycurgus or a brand-new Solon. To such a degree did they
refashion the commonwealth that it was as if they had taken it to the
forge and brought away a different one.
The grotesquely elaborate charades arranged for Quixote and Sancho by
the Duke and the Duchess through much of Part II clearly mark these charac–
ters as compulsive fictionizers, so extreme and insistent in their own way as to
cause Cide Hamete to judge them' 'as mad as their victims," .. fools them–
selves for taking such pain to play tricks on a pair of fools." And there is the
suggestion that the reality from which both the Duke and the Duchess are in
flight is not unlike the dispiriting circumstances against which Quixote re–
volts. For Dona Roderiguez , their abused servant, reveals that the Duke is in
debt to a rich farmer whom he fears to displease, while the Duchess's hand–
some skirts hide running sores on her legs' .through which she discharges all
the ill humours of which the doctors say she is full."
A part of Cervantes's attitude toward fiction and imagination , then ,
involves this inclusive demonstration of the way in which people exercise their
imaginations , invent fictions for themselves and for others, as a means of
denying misery. But his sense of the question is broader than this alone, for his
novel shows also that fiction-making is something playful and spontaneous,
an assertion of exuberance and simple aliveness. The minor characters in the
novel reveal this aspect of Cervantes's principal theme perhaps more clearly
than the major figures, as the behavior of the Duke's servants suggests. Care–
fully schooled in the intricacies of their masters ' plans for Quixote and San–
cho, these servants nonetheless depart repeatedly from the roles assigned to
them , introducing dramas and fictions of their own devising even at the risk of
displeasing their masters . During the banquet which welcomes him to the
