Don Gaiferos

Don Gaiferos is the husband of Melisendra and son-in-law of Charlemagne in the story performed at Master Pedro’s puppet show. When the emperor condemns his delay in rescuing his captive wife, Don Gaiferos turns from play to action: he casts aside the game, prepares to depart, and insists on undertaking the rescue alone. His sudden resolve makes him the episode’s figure of belated action, framed at once as a romance hero and as a character whose story is being narrated and performed for an audience.

Identity and Dramatic Setting

The boy interpreter identifies Don Gaiferos as Charlemagne’s son-in-law and Melisendra’s husband. In the tale represented by the puppets, Melisendra is held captive in Sansuena, the name given to what is now Saragossa. Her captivity gives the episode its central stake: Don Gaiferos must act to recover his wife and answer the danger to his honor that the emperor lays before him.

The audience first sees Don Gaiferos at tables, absorbed in his game while Melisendra remains captive. The boy’s account makes that image the measure of his initial failure to act. Charlemagne arrives to rebuke him for leaving his wife’s rescue undone and for putting his honor at risk. The emperor’s intervention turns a scene of leisure into a demand for immediate action.

Decision to Rescue Melisendra

After Charlemagne’s rebuke, Don Gaiferos flings away the table and board, calls for his armor, and asks Roland to lend him Durindana. Roland refuses to lend the sword but offers to join the enterprise. Don Gaiferos declines the company, declaring through his actions that he will undertake the rescue by himself, even if Melisendra were imprisoned deep beneath the earth.

The sequence moves from delay to decision through distinct reversals: the game is abandoned, the need for armor replaces leisure, and a request for a weapon becomes a choice to proceed without his cousin’s aid. The boy interpreter presents Don Gaiferos’s anger and confidence as the force carrying him out of the scene and onto his journey.

Marriage and Narrative Role

Don Gaiferos’s defining relationship in the episode is his marriage to Melisendra. Her captivity is not merely the occasion for an adventure; Charlemagne explicitly makes the failure to rescue her a matter of marital duty and honor. Don Gaiferos’s response restores movement to the story, although the supplied account stops as he prepares to set out and does not establish the outcome of the rescue.

His actions reach the reader through a layered performance: the boy explains the puppets’ identities and gestures while the spectators follow the represented tale. Don Gaiferos is therefore both the central agent in a rescue romance and a figure whose apparent heroism is presented through a theatrical interpreter. The contrast between his initial inaction at the tables and his emphatic departure gives the scene its comic as well as chivalric edge.