Don Quixote · Chapter
XXI explained
Camacho's wedding proceeds with pageantry, but Basilio interrupts, feigning suicide to win Quiteria's hand.
What happens
Camacho's wedding proceeds with pageantry, but Basilio interrupts, feigning suicide to win Quiteria's hand. Don Quixote defends the deception, and the marriage is validated.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Worship
Basilio's desperate act and Quiteria's eventual consent highlight love's power over reason and wealth.
Chivalry and Idealism
Don Quixote defends Basilio's trick as a chivalric stratagem, upholding idealistic notions of love and honor.
Justice and Morality
The episode questions the morality of deception in love and the justice of allowing the trick to succeed.
Characters to notice
- Don Quixote
Defends Basilio's trick, asserting love's stratagems are justifiable.
- Sancho Panza
Offers boorish praise of Quiteria's appearance and retreats to the wine-jars during the conflict.
- Basilio
Fakes suicide with a hidden rapier to force Quiteria to marry him.
- Quiteria
Initially silent, she ultimately confirms her marriage to Basilio.
- Camacho
The wealthy bridegroom, who is tricked and eventually pacified.
- Rocinante
Don Quixote dismounts from him to aid Basilio.
Key passages
“Wait a little, ye, as inconsiderate as ye are hasty!”
Hold on, you who are thoughtless and rash!
Basilio's dramatic interruption of the wedding.
“No miracle, no miracle; only a trick, a trick!”
It's not a miracle, just a trick!
Basilio reveals his feigned suicide was a deception.
“these two whom God hath joined man cannot separate”
What God has united, no human can separate.
Don Quixote's defense of Basilio and Quiteria's marriage.