A very slight examination of the structure of "Don Quixote" will suffice to show that Cervantes had no deep design or elaborate plan in his mind when he began the book. When he wrote those lines in which "with a few strokes of a great master he sets before us the pauper gentleman," he had no idea of the goal to which his imagination was leading him. There can be little doubt that all he contemplated was a short tale to range with those he had already written—"Rinconete and Cortadillo," "The Generous Lover," "The Adventures of Cardenio and Dorothea," the "Ill-advised Curiosity," "The Captive's Story"—a tale setting forth the ludicrous results that might be expected to follow the attempt of a crazy gentleman to act the part of a knight-errant in modern life.
It is plain, for one thing, that Sancho Panza did not enter into the original scheme, for had Cervantes thought of him he certainly would not have omitted him in his hero's outfit, which he obviously meant to be complete. Him we owe to the landlord's chance remark in chapter iii. that knights seldom travelled without squires. It is needless to point out the difference this implies. To try to think of a Don Quixote without Sancho Panza is like trying to think of a one-bladed pair of scissors.
The story was written at first, like the others, without any division, as may be seen by the beginnings and endings of the first half-dozen chapters; and without the intervention of Cid Hamet Benengeli; and it seems not unlikely that Cervantes had some intention of bringing Dulcinea, or Aldonza Lorenzo, on the scene in person. It was probably the ransacking of the Don's library and the discussion on the books of chivalry that first suggested it to him that his idea was capable of development. What, if instead of a mere string of farcical misadventures, he were to make his tale a burlesque of one of these books, caricaturing their style, incidents, and spirit? In pursuance of this change of plan, he hastily and somewhat clumsily divided what he had written into chapters on the model of "Amadis," invented the fable of a mysterious Arabic manuscript, and set up Cid Hamet Benengeli in indtation of the almost invariable practice of the chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing their books to some recondite source. In working out the new idea, he soon found the value of Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to Sancho's part, but to the whole book, is struck in the first words Sancho
