101
Sinnigen writes: «The fact that his [Basilio's] achievement is related to Christian marriage emphasizes the legitimacy of Basilio's claim» (p. 166). Sinnigen seems to have forgotten that Camacho's wedding would have been no less Christian. (N. from the A.)
102
It is unlikely that Quiteria is feigning reluctance here, since we are told in the next chapter that she knew nothing of Basilio's plan: «El buen Sancho se refociló tres días a costa de los novios, de los cuales se supo que no fue traza comunicada con la hermosa Quiteria el herirse fingidamente, sino industria de Basilio, esperando della el mesmo suceso que se había visto» (p. 694). Of course, we must take their word for it. (N. from the A.)
103
Though he was speaking of wives rather than of fiancées, Don Quijote had said at the outset that «La de la propia mujer no es mercaduría que una vez comprada se vuelve, o se trueca o cambia» (p. 673). Don Quijote must feel that men as rich as Camacho are unworthy to love and be loved, yet in the next chapter he singles out «la necesidad y la pobreza» (p. 694) as the enemies of love. (N. from the A.)
104
Sinnigen claims that «We shall see... that the 'Bodas de Camacho' dramatizes why romantic love should win» and that «The victory of romantic love is the basis for the unity of the 'Bodas de Camacho'» (p. 158). (N. from the A.)
105
Spanish Baroque poets treated classical myths and legends ambivalently. The same Quevedo who mocks Hero and Leander («un amante huevo / pasado por agua») in Hero y Leandro en paños menores uses myths seriously in order to intensify the expression of emotion in his famous sonnet «En crespa tempestad». While Góngora exalts the myth of Acis and Galatea in his Polifemo, his treatment of Pyramus and Thisbe in the romance «La ciudad de Babilonia» is irreverent. Sinnigen takes the story seriously, following the lead of Casalduero, who «has observed that Camacho is the lion, certainly a brutal beast, in this Cervantine adaptation of the Pyramus-Thisbe myth» (p. 164). Such a construction seems exaggerated, if not farfetched. For one thing, in Ovid's version at least, the lioness herself sheds no blood. For another, Camacho's generosities are hardly consistent with the characterization of him as a «brutal beast». (N. from the A.)
106
Ovid, who was probably Cervantes' source, does not fail to observe the importance of the obstacle in his Pyramus et Thisbe: «tectus magis aestuat ignis» (Metamorphoseon Libri XV, edited by Hugo Magnus [Berlin: Weidmann, 1914; reprint edition 1979 Arno Press]), p. 130. (N. from the A.)
107
F. W. Locke, «El Sabio Encantador: The Author of Don Quijote», Symposium 23 (1969), 60. The author concludes that «the 'contradictions' in the mirroring of narrators that Cervantes presents us with are not at all contradictions but an essential part of the central metaphor [of God's authorship] of Don Quijote». (N. from the A.)
108
Alexander Welsh, Reflections on the Hero as Quixote (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). viii + 244 pp. (N. from the E.)