50 Fun Facts About Don Quixote

Who wrote Don Quixote?

It came out in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, and is often called the first modern novel.

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

He is a hidalgo nearing 50 who lives with his niece and housekeeper in an unnamed village of La Mancha.

What drives Don Quixote mad?

His niece, housekeeper, priest and barber later burn most of his library and blame a wizard for walling it up.

What is the name of Don Quixote's horse?

The name puns on 'rocín', a workhorse or nag: he was 'a hack before' and is now the 'first and foremost' of hacks.

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

Aldonza Lorenzo never appears in the book; Dulcinea exists only in his head.

Who dubs Don Quixote a knight in the first sally?

He mistakes the inn for a castle and the prostitutes there for ladies, and holds vigil over his armour at the horse trough.

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

Sancho eventually gets one - a fake, courtesy of the duke - and turns out to be a wise, practical ruler before it all ends in humiliation.

What does Don Quixote believe the windmills are?

The scene gave English the phrase 'tilting at windmills'; 'tilt' means to joust.

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

His comments, mixing proverbs and earthy wit, are known as sanchismos.

What is Sancho Panza's wife called?

She is described as more or less a female version of Sancho, and he dictates letters to her from the road since he cannot write.

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

The helmet comes from Orlando Furioso; Picasso's famous 1955 sketch shows the knight wearing it.

What happens to Sancho at the inn of Juan Palomeque after his master leaves without paying?

Don Quixote had explained that the inn was enchanted, then followed the knights of his books in skipping the bill.

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

The 'archives of La Mancha' supposedly run out at a cliffhanger in chapter 8, and the manuscript turns up in chapter 9.

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

The officer of the Santa Hermandad is talked into mercy on account of the knight's insanity, and he is taken home in a cage.

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

Along the way he debates the merits of chivalric books with a canon of Toledo.

What is unusual about many characters in the 1615 sequel?

The duke and duchess stage elaborate pranks precisely because they know the book.

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

He resists, and the friction with his master becomes one of the running jokes of the second half.

Who defeats Don Quixote on the beach at Barcelona and orders him to give up chivalry for a year?

He is a young man from Quixote's own village who had earlier posed as the Knight of Mirrors.

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

The author then declares that any further books about Don Quixote would be spurious.

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

In Part Two, Don Quixote visits a Barcelona printing house and finds the counterfeit being printed - an early stroke of metafiction.

Which chivalric romance does the priest call 'the best book in the world' during the library purge?

Exactly what he meant by 'best' has been called the most difficult passage in the whole novel.

In 2004, academics deduced Don Quixote's unnamed village was which town?

Cervantes said he left it vague so every town in La Mancha could claim him, as seven Greek cities claimed Homer.

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

French, Portuguese and Italian kept the old sound - hence Massenet's Don Quichotte - while modern Spanish shifted to the throaty 'j'.

Which English proverb first appeared in Motteux's 1700 translation rather than in Cervantes's Spanish?

The original literally says 'you will see when the eggs are fried'.

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

He was a Dublin Catholic who had come to the attention of English intelligence for offering his services to Irish rebels.

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

She said she wept at the book as a young reader and laughed out loud at her computer while translating it.

Roughly how many copies is Don Quixote believed to have sold worldwide?

Most of the first print run of 400 was shipped to the Americas, and much of it sank near Havana.

A 2002 poll of writers from 55 countries, run by the Norwegian Nobel Institute, voted Don Quixote what?

Mark Twain credited it with sweeping away the world's admiration for medieval 'chivalry-silliness'.

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

He was nicknamed 'El manco de Lepanto' and said he had 'lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right'.

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

He was held in Algiers, made four escape attempts, and was finally ransomed by the Trinitarian order in 1580.

In which Spanish town was Cervantes born?

His father was a barber-surgeon who was frequently in debt and moved the family constantly.

Which date, tied to the 1616 deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare, is celebrated as World Book Day?

Cervantes actually died on the 22nd and was buried on the 23rd, and England was still on the Julian calendar, so the two deaths were ten days apart.

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

He was buried as a pauper, and his remains went missing during rebuilding work in 1673.

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

Its original lyricist was W. H. Auden, whose words were dropped as too biting; 'The Impossible Dream' became a standard.

Who created Don Quixote in the original Broadway Man of La Mancha after Rex Harrison proved unable to sing it?

The show ran 2,328 performances and won five Tonys, including Best Musical.

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

Peter O'Toole doubled as Cervantes and Quixote, and the film was shot in Rome.

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

It premiered at the Bolshoi in Moscow in 1869; today's productions descend from Alexander Gorsky's 1900 staging.

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

Sancho is shared between solo viola, tenor tuba and bass clarinet, and flutter-tonguing brass plays a flock of bleating sheep.

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

Massenet wrote much of it from his sickbed, calling the work a 'soothing balm' for his rheumatism.

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

It appeared on the cover of the French weekly Les Lettres Françaises and looks nothing like his Blue, Rose or Cubist work.

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

The same artist later earned 30,000 francs illustrating Poe's The Raven.

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

Jesús Franco assembled a version released in 1992 to mixed reviews.

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

Adam Driver played Toby, the modern advertising director; the project had been in development hell for 29 years.

Which 2002 documentary chronicles the collapse of Gilliam's first attempt to film Don Quixote?

Floods destroyed the sets and star Jean Rochefort fell ill; Jeff Bridges narrates.

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

'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' is a favourite text for arguments about authorship and interpretation.

The dinosaurs Lohuecotitan pandafilandi and Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra are named after what?

A deep-sea amphipod, Dulcibella camanchaca, honours the knight's imaginary lady, and a family of snails is named Quijotidae.

In 1632, Cardinal Zapata ordered what removed from future editions of the novel?

The offending advice to the squire was that half-hearted good works 'are without merit and of no avail'.

What word did the character's fame quickly add to many languages?

Merriam-Webster defines it as the foolishly impractical pursuit of ideals, marked by rash and lofty romanticism.

Most of the 400 first-edition copies of Part One were shipped to the New World; where did about 70 end up?

The publisher hoped for better prices in the Americas, but most copies were lost in a shipwreck near Havana; the survivors were sent on to Cuzco.

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.