Don Quixote’s dubbing as a knight is a comic initiation in which an improvised ceremony gives formal shape to his chivalric delusion. At an inn he imagines to be a castle, he insists on keeping vigil over his armor before receiving knighthood; when the vigil provokes a clash with carriers, the landlord abbreviates the rites and dubs him with an account book in place of a religious text. The ceremony sends Don Quixote back onto the road, newly convinced that he may pursue adventures as a knight-errant.

The Request and the Landlord’s Response

The event begins with a practical obstacle in Don Quixote’s imagined career: he believes he cannot lawfully undertake adventures until he has been dubbed a knight. After finishing his sparse supper, he shuts himself in the stable with the landlord, kneels, and refuses to rise until his request is granted. He asks to keep watch over his armor in the castle chapel that night and be dubbed the following morning, so that he can travel through the world helping people in distress. The kneeling gesture and solemn appeal treat the innkeeper as a powerful authority, though the scene takes place in an ordinary lodging house.

The landlord initially stares in bewilderment, then agrees to play along. Already suspecting that his guest is not in his right mind, he sees an opportunity to turn the request into amusement. He presents himself as a former traveler in the same supposedly honorable profession, but the account of his past undercuts the pose: his supposed adventures involved cheating and other offenses, and he says he eventually settled at the inn. His welcome to wandering knights is likewise presented as self-serving. The landlord does not correct Don Quixote’s belief that the inn is a castle; instead, he uses the knight’s own assumptions to manage him.

The chapel, the landlord explains, is unavailable because it is being rebuilt, but the armor can be watched in the courtyard instead. He also supplies practical advice that Don Quixote’s romances have omitted. Knights should carry money, clean shirts, and ointments, and their squires should bring supplies such as lint; when knights travel without squires, concealed saddle-bags can hold necessities. Don Quixote accepts this correction and promises to follow it. The landlord’s mixture of mockery and sound logistical counsel quietly equips the would-be knight for the material demands his idealized stories have left out.

The Vigil and the Clash

Don Quixote gathers his armor and places it on a trough beside a well in the inn’s yard. With his buckler on his arm and lance in hand, he begins pacing before it as night falls. The landlord tells the other people at the inn what his guest intends to do, and they gather at a distance to watch. In the bright moonlight, Don Quixote alternates between walking with composure and standing for long stretches gazing at his armor. The watchers see a solemn vigil; the scene’s setting makes plain how little the surroundings resemble the castle Don Quixote believes he occupies.

The vigil becomes a confrontation when a carrier comes to water his team and needs the trough cleared. Don Quixote warns him not to touch the armor, but the carrier moves it anyway. Don Quixote invokes Dulcinea del Toboso for help, drops his buckler, and strikes the carrier with his lance. He then retrieves the armor and resumes his watch as if the interruption has been dealt with according to the rules of a knightly encounter.

A second carrier approaches for the same practical reason. This time Don Quixote strikes without first appealing to anyone. The noise brings the inn’s people and the landlord to the yard; the other carriers throw stones at Don Quixote, who shields himself with his buckler but will not leave the armor unguarded. He denounces his assailants and condemns the landlord for permitting what he sees as an affront to a knight. The landlord urges the carriers to stop, explaining that Don Quixote is mad and cannot be held responsible even if he were to kill them. They desist, and Don Quixote again takes up the watch. His imagined honor code has turned an ordinary attempt to use a well into a fight, while his attachment to the armor keeps him fixed in place as the conflict spreads around him.

The Makeshift Dubbing

Alarmed that further trouble may follow, the landlord decides to finish the business at once. He tells Don Quixote that the chapel is unnecessary and that the essential elements of knighting are an accolade and a blow to the shoulder. He also declares the vigil complete: the required watch was two hours, he says, and Don Quixote has kept it for more than four. Don Quixote accepts this account and urges the landlord to proceed quickly, warning that another attack might end badly for everyone in the inn.

For the ceremony, the landlord brings out the book he uses to record the straw and barley supplied to carriers. A boy holds a candle end, and the two women already present accompany the proceedings. The landlord tells Don Quixote to kneel, reads from the account book as though reciting a prayer, strikes his neck, and gives him a blow on the shoulder with his own sword. He mutters as if performing a religious rite. The substitution is central to the episode’s comedy: the gestures of a solemn investiture are retained, but their props and setting belong to innkeeping rather than a chapel or court.

One woman girds Don Quixote with his sword, and the other fastens his spur. The first identifies herself as La Tolosa, a cobbler’s daughter from Toledo; the second is La Molinera, the daughter of a miller from Antequera. Don Quixote asks each woman’s name so that he can remember whom he is indebted to and share any honor won by his arm. He also asks them to adopt the title of “Dona,” and both agree. Their ordinary backgrounds and the visitors’ difficulty suppressing their laughter contrast with the elevated dignity Don Quixote assigns to the occasion. Yet the women participate with composure, completing the gestures he understands as necessary to his new status.

Departure and Significance

Once the improvised rites are complete, Don Quixote is eager to leave on horseback in pursuit of adventures. He saddles Rocinante, embraces the landlord, and thanks him for the dubbing in elaborate language. The landlord replies briefly and lets him depart without paying his bill. Don Quixote takes the ceremony as the fulfillment of his longed-for initiation; the innkeeper’s practical aim has been to end the disturbance and get him safely out of the inn.

The episode establishes a pattern that will shape Don Quixote’s travels: he interprets mundane places and actions through the forms of chivalric romance, while other people either resist, humor, or exploit that interpretation. The landlord’s accommodation is neither a genuine recognition of Don Quixote as a knight nor a simple correction of his mistake. He stages enough of the ritual to satisfy his guest, but its account-book prayer, borrowed sword, and improvised attendants keep the ceremony rooted in the everyday world. The result is both a turning point in Don Quixote’s self-conception and a burlesque coronation: he leaves with the authority he believes the rite has conferred, although the rite itself has been fashioned to contain the disorder his belief has already caused.