Man Of La Mancha

3 Pages 709 Words

I read the play “The Man Of La Mancha” by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh. The Man Of La Mancha is set in the age of the Spanish Inquisition in Spain. The set begins in a dank prison cell scene filled with prisoners that await judgment of the captain of the Inquisition. A man named Cervantes enters with his man servant with a large chest and sets himself down in the cell to await his fate. The prisoners see the chest and take the advantage to loot through and get some luxury items but the chest is filled with wigs and make-up. A judge arrives to question Cervantes and give him an opportunity to plead his case. Cervantes says that his case would best be described in a play. The summons the prisoners to play the roles of the people he encounters and has his man servant play Sancho, while Cervantes plays Don Quixote. Don Quixote and Sancho are riding on horses along a stretch of highway when Quixote comes across a windmill that he believes is a giant while Sancho tells him repeatedly that it’s a windmill. Quixote runs off and gets pummeled by the windmill and crawling back on stage figures out that he was only defeated because he was never properly dubbed a knight. He sees what he thinks is a castle in the distance when in reality it’s an inn. They arrive at the inn and Quixote falls in love with the local whore Aldonza. He approaches the innkeeper thinking he is a duke and asks to be knighted so the innkeeper regretfully does this and Quixote is a knight in his eyes now. The duo set off in search for adventure when they find none they return to the inn when the knight of the mirrors arrives to show Quixote that he is not a knight and is nothing more than a crazed old man. Quixote falls and is nursed back to health by his niece and Aldonza, but he is convinced that he is a normal man, until Sancho sings a song that they sang together on their adventures and realizes that he really is the gallant knight D...