Who Wrote Don Quixote?

What evidence is there that Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote? There is no manuscript, no letter, no diary, no will, no marked grave, no record of any payment for Don Quixote, although it became popular in Spain and abroad during his lifetime. What do we know about Thomas Shelton,whose translation has won the praise of literary historians ever since it appeared in England in 1612? What do we know of Cid Hamet Benengeli, the Arab historian who,we are told by Cervantes, is the real author?

Until now no proper attempt has been made to place Don Quixote in the wider context of the great plays of this period of European literature, the plays of Shakespeare. And no-one has paid enough attention to the Shelton text, which is seldom read today.

 

English Characters in Don Quixote

Thomas Cecial "my neighbour" - Sir Thomas Cecil, cousin and friend of Fracis Bacon

Samson Carrasco - Nicholas Carr and Roger Ascham,Cambridge professors

Queen Madasima & Master Elisabat, her physician - Queen Elizabeth and Roderigo Lopez, her physician

Cid Hamet Benengeli,"the real author" mentioned 33 times - Lord Hamlet, son of England

Friston, the Enchanter - Friston, a village in Sussex, where the giant of Wilmington fought the giant of Firle

Pyramus and Thisbe - Pyramus and Thisbe (Midsummer Nights Dream)

 

Identical Quotations

Many indications, many clues, are found in the Shelton text itself. I have found 150 quotations in Don Quixote which appear in the works of Bacon or Shakespeare - or both. Here are some of them:

All is not gold that glisters
One swallow makes not a summer
He that gives quickly, gives twice
God and St.George!
Might overcomes right
The weakest go to the wall
Comparisons are odious
The naked truth
I was born free
Time out of mind
Through narrow chinks and crannies
Let the world wag
Every pissing while
The golden age
The long word

 

Why the secrecy?

The sixth rule of the Rosicrucians, as laid down in the Fama Fraternitatis of 1614,was that members should remain anonymous for one hundred years. The leading member of the Rosicrucians in England at this time was Francis Bacon.
No attention has been paid to the date of Don Quixote's publication in Madrid in 1605, only six years after the fourth Armada of 1599. An important element in this work, seldom mentioned by critics, is its surprising lack of animosity towards England. If it had appeared as an English novel in Spain, everyone would have been understandably prejudiced against it. It took a long time to win the lasting admiration of the Spaniards. If it had carried an English name on its title page, it would have immediately aroused hostility among critics and the general public. Allowing a Spanish author to present this novel as his own work, Bacon this gave this subtly pro-English book the best possible chance of being read and accepted in Spain without prejudice.
Don Quixote should be regarded as an instrument of reconciliation between Spain and England, two great countries kept apart by war and the threat of war for five decades. Distrust and hatred of the foreigner had caused the deaths of innocent men in both countries. Now was the time for peace and good-will, a policy that James I keenly pursued. Indeed the complete absence of anything even remotely critical of the English in itself establishes Don Quixote as an important milestone in Anglo-Spanish relations. At the same time in England, Don Quixote, read and enjoyed by a large public in the seventeenth century, acted in the same way as a healer of the wide gulf between the two countries, as there is nothing in the book which is hostile towards Spain; and nothing is said about Spanish hatred of the English.
When Don Quixote appeared in Madrid and in London, the great Shakespeare plays appeared on the London stage. When the English plays and the Spanish novel are looked at together, a clear picture emerges: the creation of a pan-European literary master-plan. The greatest, most famous play about Denmark is Hamlet. The greatest plays about Italy are Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello, the Moor of Venice. The greatest play about Rome is Julius Caesar. The greatest play about Egypt and its absorption into the Roman empire is Antony and Cleopatra. The greatest plays about England are the Shakespeare history dramas. All these plays are the work of one man, and all of them were written under a pen name.
One leading European nation is conspicuous by its absence in this catalogue of masterpieces. There is no world-famous play about Spain, which is on the same level of genius as the plays just mentioned: but there is one great novel about Spain which is just as famous throughout the world - Don Quixote. Like all the Shakespeare plays, this appeared under an alias. Bacon, casting his eye over the whole of Europe, found that this area lacked an appropriate masterpiece, an epic story to match those of Greece, Rome, Italy, and Great Britain. In a letter to Lord Burleigh written in 1592 Bacon declared "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." A play would not have been the right format for a Spanish epic. Needing a larger canvas he chose to write a novel.


In the penultimate chapter of DQ Francis Bacon's name is clearly given in one oddly worded paragraph. The reader's attention is alerted by the pattern made by the girls' names which are all italicised. This pattern is only visible in the 1620 edition of the Shelton version of `DQ. In subseqent edtions these italics have disappeared. In the Cervantes text,this paragraph stands as a pointless rigmarole of names. The names in italics in this paragraph are all in italics in the English text:


The italicised names form a Y pattern. The name Francis appears in the third line;and the letters b,a,c,n,o can be read vertically on the right side. The letter Y is a Pythagorian symbol,adopted by the Rosicrucians, symbolising the broad way of the tyrant and the narrow way of the adepti, or the inspired.

from WHO WROTE DON QUIXOTE? by FRANCIS CARR
(awaiting publication)