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carefully watched by the Ancients that it might improve mankind in
virtue; and indeed many wise men and great philosophers have thought
it to the mind as the bow to the fiddle."

And in Shelton's Don Quixote we find the following:

"Comedie, as Tully affirmes, ought to be a mirrour of mans life, a
patterne of manners, and an Image of TRUTH. If wee would passé further
to examine the divine Comedies that treate of God, or the lives of the
Saints, what a multitude of false miracles doe the composers devise?

. The auditour, having heard an artificiall and well ordered Comedy,
. Would come away delighted with the *JESTs* , & instructed by the
. TRUTHs thereof; wondering at the successes, grow discreeter by
. the Reasons, warned by the deceits, become wise by others example,
. Incensed against vice, and enamoured of virtue;
. all which affects A good Comedie should stirre up in
. the hearers minde, were he NEVER so grosse or clownish…
. It is not possible for the bow to continue still bent:
. nor can our Humane and fraile nature sustaine it selfe long,
. without some Helpe of lawfull recreation."

Carr examines the Spanish and English texts of Don Quixote in detail
and finds numerous indications that the English text came first. Not
only this, but he even examines the topology of Don Quixote and finds
many indications that the landscape through which Don Quixote wanders
in his quest is actually the landscape of England instead of the
landscape of Spain. One example of this is the windmill episode,
which has become the most celebrated incident in the whole work.

Immediately before going forth on his adventure where he encountered
the windmill Quixote's barber, cook, and niece have thrown out and
burned his books, and even blocked up and hidden the door to his
library. His niece tells him that an enchanter who rode on a serpent,
has destroyed the books. She says his name was Muniaton, but Don
Quixote says he was Freston. Then when he goes he comes to a landscape
where there are 30 or 40 windmills, but Quixote says they are really
giants. Carr notes that near the village of Friston in Sussex, a
village that was originally spelt as Freston is a figure of a giant,
227 feet high, known as the long Man of Wilmington, who according to
one legend was the giant of Friston (Freston), nearby stood an old
windmill, and there are a number of windmills in the neighborhood.
Carr also notes that one of the traditional interpretations of the
Long Man of Wilmington is that he is the Sun God, and that Muniaton
can be interpreted to mean the wisdom-enhanced spirit of the Sun. So
Carr says, "in the county of Sussex, in the south-eastern corner of
England, only sixty miles from London, we are in a land of windmills,
of giants, of old legends and tales of singlecombat." And he adds
that nearby is a small, deep pool of clear water and that there
was a legend that in ancient times a dragon, a creature of enormous
size that had wings and looked like a serpent was wont to come
forth from the depths of this hole and prey on the sheep
in the neighboring areas.

Charles Fort, aficionado of the roads less traveled, named one of his
books, The Book of the Damned, because, he said, the facts in the book
were damned to be ignored and excluded by mainstream scholars &
scientists. Who Wrote Don Quixote may or may not be a book of
the damned, but it is certainly a damned interesting book.
As Francis Bacon said, "Some books are to be tasted, others
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
Who Wrote Don Quixote is one of the latter. ----------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

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