50 Fun Facts About Don Quixote

What animal does Sancho Panza ride as he follows Don Quixote on his adventures?

A donkey. A thief makes off with it while Sancho sleeps, and the squire wakes to weep for the beast he calls his children's plaything and his wife's joy.

Don Quixote's real name, before madness sets in, is what?

Alonso Quixano. The narrator pretends not to be sure, offering Quixada, Quesada and Quexana on the first page, and the true name comes out only on the knight's deathbed.

Don Quixote sets out to copy the heroes of his favourite reading; which fictional knight is his chief model?

Amadís of Gaul. In the mountains he even copies his hero's lovesick penance, stripping to his shirt and turning somersaults while Sancho looks away.

What is the name of Don Quixote's horse?

Rocinante. The name is a joke: rocín means a worn-out nag and ante means before, so he was a mere hack before and is now the foremost hack in the world.

Who does Don Quixote choose as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso?

A pork-salting farm girl. Aldonza Lorenzo never appears in the story and never learns that she is his lady: Dulcinea exists only in the knight's head.

Who dubs Don Quixote a knight in the first sally?

An innkeeper. To be rid of his troublesome guest he plays lord of the castle, mumbling the ceremony out of the ledger in which he records his straw and barley.

What does Don Quixote promise Sancho Panza to recruit him as his squire?

A governorship. Sancho dreams of an island to rule and, thanks to a duke's practical joke, finally gets a make-believe one, where he surprises everyone by judging wisely.

What does Don Quixote believe the windmills are?

Giants. He charges, a sail smashes his lance and flings horse and rider across the field, and English gained 'tilting at windmills' for fighting enemies that are not there.

What does Sancho's surname, Panza, mean in Spanish?

Belly. The word is a cousin of the English 'paunch', and it suits a squire who thinks of his supper first while his gaunt master dreams of glory.

By which name is Sancho Panza's wife known in Part Two of Don Quixote?

Teresa Cascajo. Cervantes could not keep her name straight: in Part One Sancho calls her Juana Gutiérrez and then, a few lines later, Mari Gutiérrez.

What everyday object does Don Quixote take for the legendary helmet of Mambrino?

A barber's basin. Its owner had put it on his head to keep the rain off his new hat, and from far away the polished metal glittered like a golden helmet.

What happens to Sancho after Don Quixote leaves an inn without paying?

He is tossed in a blanket. Don Quixote hears his cries from outside the wall but is too battered even to get off his horse, so all he can do is shout curses at the tossers.

Cervantes claims the story is translated from which fictional Moorish historian's Arabic text?

Cide Hamete Benengeli. The narrator says he found the manuscript among old papers on sale in a Toledo market and paid a translator in raisins and wheat.

Which group of prisoners does Don Quixote free, later earning him an arrest warrant?

Galley slaves. The freed men repay him at once: when he orders them to go and present themselves to Dulcinea, they pelt him with stones and run off.

How is Don Quixote finally brought home at the end of Part One?

In a cage he thinks is enchanted. The knight is puzzled, because the heroes in his books were whisked away on clouds or chariots of fire, never on a plodding ox-cart.

What is unusual about many characters Don Quixote meets in Part Two?

They have read the first book. A duke and duchess who know his printed adventures welcome him as a celebrity and stage elaborate hoaxes to watch him live up to them.

In Part Two, Sancho is told Dulcinea can be freed from enchantment only if he does what?

Gives himself 3,300 lashes. He stalls for most of Part Two and gets down to it only once his master agrees to pay him a quarter real for every stroke.

Who defeats Don Quixote on the beach at Barcelona and sends him home for a year?

The Knight of the White Moon. Behind the visor is Samson Carrasco, a student from the knight's own village, who staged the duel as a trick to get him home and cured.

What condition does the dying Don Quixote put in his will regarding his niece?

No marrying a reader of chivalry books. If she does, she forfeits everything he has left her, and his executors are to give it all away to good causes.

In 1614, a fake sequel appeared under which pen name, goading Cervantes into finishing Part Two?

Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Cervantes answered inside his own Part Two: told that the fake knight rode to Saragossa, Don Quixote refuses to set foot there and makes for Barcelona instead.

In Don Quixote's library purge, which romance does the priest call 'the best book in the world'?

Tirant lo Blanch. The priest admires it because its knights eat, sleep, die in their beds and make their wills, things no other romance bothers to mention.

Cervantes left Don Quixote's village unnamed so that all La Mancha's towns could claim him, as seven Greek cities claimed whom?

Homer. The joke runs the length of the book: its first sentence refuses to recall the village's name, and only the last page explains why.

How was 'Quixote' originally pronounced in the Old Castilian of Cervantes's day?

With a 'sh' sound. French borrowed the name before Spanish shifted that sound to its throaty 'j', which is why the French still say and write Don Quichotte.

Which English proverb, often credited to Don Quixote, was really added by the translator Motteux around 1700?

The proof of the pudding. English already had the proverb by 1605; where Motteux used it, Sancho's Spanish says 'you will see when the eggs are fried'.

Who published the first translation of Don Quixote into any language, in 1612?

Thomas Shelton. By his own account he dashed it off in forty days for a friend who wanted to know what the book was about, then left it unpublished for years.

Whose 2003 English translation of Don Quixote did Carlos Fuentes call a 'major literary achievement'?

Edith Grossman. She insisted that her name go on the cover beside the author's, joking that publishers liked to pretend a magic wand did the translating.

Sleepwalking at an inn, Don Quixote slashes what, believing he is killing a princess's enemy?

Wineskins. The red wine that floods the room convinces him and Sancho that it is his enemy's blood, and the furious landlord adds the damage to their bill.

In 2002, a hundred leading authors from 54 countries voted Don Quixote what?

The greatest work of fiction ever written. The other 99 books on the authors' list were left unranked: only this one was singled out, with half as many votes again as any rival.

At which 1571 naval battle was Cervantes wounded, losing the use of his left hand?

Lepanto. Although sick with fever he refused to stay below deck, and he took two gunshots in the chest and a third that crippled his left hand for life.

Cervantes spent five years as a captive after being seized in 1575 by whom?

Barbary pirates. Letters of praise he was carrying from Don John of Austria convinced his captors that he was a great prize, so they raised his ransom and his captivity dragged on.

In which Spanish town was Cervantes born?

Alcalá de Henares. Only his baptism there on 9 October 1547 is on record; his birthday is guessed at 29 September, the feast of the Saint Michael he was named after.

World Book Day falls on 23 April, a date tied to the 1616 deaths of Cervantes and which English writer?

William Shakespeare. The two did not really die on the same day: England still kept the old Julian calendar, so Shakespeare outlived Cervantes by more than a week.

Cervantes was buried in Madrid at a convent of which religious order, in gratitude for his ransom?

The Trinitarians. His grave was then lost when the convent was rebuilt, and only in 2015 did a forensic team report finding bone fragments it believed were his.

The 1965 musical Man of La Mancha frames the story as a play staged by Cervantes while awaiting what?

A hearing with the Inquisition. His fellow prisoners put him on mock trial for his belongings, and his defence is to act out the knight's story with them as the cast.

Who first played Don Quixote in the original 1965 Broadway production of Man of La Mancha?

Richard Kiley. The part won him a Tony, and he came back to play the knight in the Broadway revivals of 1972 and 1977.

Who plays Aldonza/Dulcinea in the 1972 film of Man of La Mancha?

Sophia Loren. Her co-star Peter O'Toole could not sing, so every song the knight performs in this musical is dubbed by another man's voice.

The famous Don Quixote ballet was choreographed by Marius Petipa to music by whom?

Ludwig Minkus. The ballet barely follows the knight: its story is the love of Kitri and the barber Basilio, spun out of two chapters about a village wedding.

In Richard Strauss's tone poem Don Quixote, which solo instrument represents the knight?

Cello. Sancho Panza gets the solo viola, and when the knight charges a flock of sheep the brass players flutter their tongues to make the orchestra bleat.

Jules Massenet's opera Don Quichotte premiered in 1910 in which city?

Monte Carlo. Massenet wrote the title role for the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, who went on to play the knight again on film in 1933.

Picasso's famous ink sketch of Don Quixote and Sancho was made in 1955 to mark what?

The 350th anniversary of Part One. Drawn for a French weekly in a few quick strokes of black ink, it looks nothing like the Blue, Rose or Cubist work that made him famous.

Which French artist's 1860s illustrations for Don Quixote fixed the image of the gaunt knight and round squire?

Gustave Doré. Not everyone approved: one of Cervantes's English translators complained that Doré drew a rough stone water trough as an elaborate fountain and so missed the point, that everything around the knight is shabby and ordinary.

Which director worked on a Don Quixote film on and off from 1957 until his death, leaving it unfinished?

Orson Welles. He paid for much of it out of his own acting fees and filmed in bursts for years, and another director pieced a version together only after his death.

Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote finally premiered in 2018 with which actor as Quixote?

Jonathan Pryce. He was at least the fifth man given the part: in 29 years of false starts Jean Rochefort, Robert Duvall, Michael Palin and John Hurt had all been cast before him.

In the documentary about Terry Gilliam's first Don Quixote shoot, what wrecks the equipment on only the second day?

A flash flood. Within a week the star's slipped disc had finished off the film as well, leaving the documentary 'Lost in La Mancha' as the only thing the shoot produced.

Which Argentine writer's 1939 story has a Frenchman recreating Don Quixote word for word?

Jorge Luis Borges. In 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' the narrator solemnly argues that the new text, identical line for line, is far richer than the original.

In a nod to Don Quixote, what do the Spanish dinosaur names Lohuecotitan pandafilandi and Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra honour?

Minor characters in the novel. Pandafilando 'of the Scowl' is a squinting giant in a tale told to fool the knight, a fitting namesake for a huge long-necked titanosaur.

In 1632, a cardinal's index of censored passages ordered what cut from future editions of Don Quixote?

A line about lukewarm charity. Chiding Sancho for skimping on his penance, the duchess says that good works done half-heartedly have no merit, and the censor struck the sentence out.

The word 'quixotic', taken from Don Quixote's name, describes someone who is what?

Idealistic but impractical. The knight's own name is a joke as well: a quixote is the piece of armour that covers the thigh.

Blindfolded and tricked by a duke's servants, Don Quixote and Sancho believe they are flying through the sky on what?

A wooden horse. Clavileño never leaves the ground, and the hoaxers end the 'flight' by lighting its tail, so that the fireworks packed inside blow knight and squire off its back.

In the interpolated tale 'The Ill-Advised Curiosity', which friend does Anselmo ask to test his wife's fidelity?

The Florentine nobleman's scheme backfires: Lothario and Camilla fall in love, and all three end up dead of grief or battle.