Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

And if mimesis is the principal quality a play should have, how can it possibly satisfy anyone of even average intelligence if the action is supposed to occur in the days of King Pepin and Charlemagne, but the central character is the Emperor Heraclius, who entered Jerusalem bearing the cross, and conquered the Holy Sepulchre, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when there is an infinite number of years between one and the other; if the play is based on fictions, historical truths are introduced and parts of others are combined, though they occurred to different people and at different times, and this is done not with any effort at verisimilitude, but with glaring errors that are completely unforgiveable. The worst thing is the ignorant folk who say that this is perfect, and that wanting anything else is pretentious and whimsical. Well then, what shall we say about sacred plays? What a number of false miracles and apocryphal, poorly understood stories they invent, attributing the miracles of one saint to another! And even in their secular plays they dare perform miracles, with no other concern or consideration than thinking that some miracle or stage effect, as they call it, would be a good idea at that point so the ignorant will marvel and come to the theater; all of this is prejudicial to the truth, and damaging to history, and even a discredit to the intelligence of Spaniards, because foreigners, who are punctilious in obeying the rules of drama, think of us as ignorant barbarian...