The Curate and Barber's Rescue Plan

The Curate and Barber's Rescue Plan turns concern for Don Quixote into a theatrical ruse. When Sancho Panza reports that his master is performing a penance in the Sierra Morena, the curate and the barber decide to bring him away by appealing to the very chivalric obligations that sustain his delusions. Their method depends on disguise, a fabricated grievance, and Sancho’s cooperation; at this point in the episode, the plan is under way, but its success has not yet been established.

Background and Objective

The immediate concern is to coax Don Quixote out of what the curate calls a useless penance and interrupt the life he has chosen in the mountains. Sancho agrees to enter the inn with the curate and the barber, but says he will wait outside and explain later why he does not wish to go in. He asks them to bring him hot food and barley for Rocinante. While he waits, the two men consider how to carry out their purpose over a meal.

The plan is also shaped by their expectation that Don Quixote can be persuaded through his own ambitions. The barber says they should urge him, as a matter of conscience, to become an emperor rather than an archbishop, on the grounds that he is more valiant than learned. Sancho agrees that his master is suited to either role, but hopes that he will be placed where he can bestow the greatest favors. The conversation reveals how closely Sancho’s hope of reward is bound to Don Quixote’s imagined advancement: an emperor, he reasons, can reward a squire more generously than an archbishop.

The Damsel’s Appeal

The curate devises the central stratagem. He will appear to be a wandering damsel in distress and ask Don Quixote to accompany her to redress a wrong done by a wicked knight. The request is carefully constructed for its intended audience: as a self-proclaimed knight-errant, Don Quixote should be unable to refuse a plea for help from an aggrieved woman. The supposed damsel will further ask him not to make her remove her mask or question her circumstances until he has corrected the wrong.

The disguise therefore serves more than concealment. It gives Don Quixote a recognizable chivalric task, with a victim, an adversary, and a promise of justice, while directing him away from his solitary penance. The curate expects that Don Quixote will accept the request on those terms. Once he has left the mountain, the rescuers hope to take him to his own village and find out whether his extraordinary madness can be remedied. Their approach resembles Don Quixote’s own professed duty to aid the oppressed, but here that ideal is deliberately used to guide him toward a practical destination.

Costumes and a Change of Roles

The barber approves the proposal, and the pair immediately ask the innkeeper’s wife for a petticoat and hood, leaving the curate’s new cassock as security. For a false beard, the barber uses a reddish ox-tail in which the innkeeper keeps his comb. When the innkeeper and his wife learn that the disguise is intended to get Don Quixote off the mountain, they recognize him as their former guest—the man associated with the balsam and the squire who had been tossed in a blanket—and recount what had happened at the inn.

The landlady dresses the curate in an old-fashioned outfit: a cloth petticoat with broad black velvet stripes and slashes, and a green velvet bodice trimmed with white satin. The curate declines the hood, puts on a quilted linen cap and a black-silk band, and uses another band as a mask. He finishes the costume with a broad-brimmed hat and rides his mule seated side-saddle. The barber, meanwhile, wears the beard of mixed red and white ox-tail, which hangs to his waist.

Almost as soon as they leave the inn, the curate has second thoughts. He judges it unbecoming for a priest to appear in such a costume, despite the purpose of the undertaking, and proposes that the barber play the damsel while he takes the less compromising role of squire. The barber accepts the change. This revision preserves the scheme while showing the curate’s concern that the means of helping Don Quixote should not disregard his own clerical dignity. Sancho arrives at this moment and cannot keep from laughing at their appearance.

Sancho’s Part in the Deception

The curate instructs the barber in the part he is to play, but the barber says he can manage it without further coaching. He postpones putting on the clothes until they are closer to Don Quixote, folds them up, and sets out with the curate under Sancho’s guidance. As they travel, Sancho recounts an encounter with a madman in the Sierra but withholds the discovery of a valise and its contents; the account notes that, despite his simplicity, he is somewhat covetous.

The next day they reach the place where Sancho had laid broom branches to mark the way to his master. The curate and the barber tell him not to reveal who they are or that he knows them. They also prepare him for Don Quixote’s likely question about whether he delivered the letter to Dulcinea del Toboso. Sancho is to say that he delivered it, that she could not read it, and that she gave him an oral answer commanding Don Quixote to visit her at once, on pain of her displeasure. This invented message offers a second inducement alongside the damsel’s appeal, using Don Quixote’s devotion to his lady to draw him from the mountain.

Sancho listens carefully and welcomes the plan to make Don Quixote an emperor rather than an archbishop, again because he expects an emperor to have more power to reward a squire. He even proposes going ahead to deliver the false message, hoping it may bring his master away without requiring the others to go to so much trouble. The curate and barber agree to wait for him to report back. Their rescue thus depends not only on costume and performance, but on Sancho carrying a fabricated message and maintaining a shared secret.

The Plan in Motion

Sancho enters the mountain ravines ahead of the others, leaving them beside a small stream, among rocks and trees. It is an August afternoon, at about three o’clock, and the heat leads them to wait in the shade for his return. While they are resting, a voice singing without instrumental accompaniment reaches them. They are surprised both by the quality of the singing and by verses that seem more polished than the work of rustic shepherds. The interruption opens onto another encounter before the rescue plan has reached Don Quixote.

The episode’s method is built on a revealing contradiction: the curate and the barber regard Don Quixote’s chosen penance as harmful, yet they cannot reach him by simply insisting that he abandon it. Instead, they construct a fresh adventure in the language he trusts, complete with a damsel, an alleged wrong, a knightly obligation, and a message from Dulcinea del Toboso. The scheme is practical in its destination but theatrical in its means, and its preparations show Sancho, the curate, and the barber coordinating a deception in order to bring Don Quixote back toward ordinary life.