Sancho Panza in Eighteenth-Century English Theater: Disrupting the Path of the English Knight-Errant

Abstract

Widely translated and adapted in eighteenth-century England, Don Quixote inspired some of the period's greatest fiction. Yet while literary adaptations of Cervantes's novel often render its humor “amiable” and accommodate it to polite society, dramatic adaptations instead accentuate its low comedy and farce. This paper argues that dramatic entertainments should factor into discussions of the novel's extraordinary influence in eighteenth-century England. Thomas D'Urfey's popular trilogy, The Comical History of Don Quixote (1694–95), and several of its successors augment the base characteristics of Sancho and employ physical violence and cruelty to women and lower characters, showing that low comedy thrived in not only marginalized genres like jestbooks and comic illustrations, but also popular drama.