(CERVANTES: May I set the stage? I shall impersonate a man. Come, enter into my imagination and see him! His name... Alonso Quijana... a country squire, no longer young... bony, hollow-faced... eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision. Being retired, he has much time for books. He studies them from morn to night and often through the night as well. And all he reads oppresses him... fills him with indignation at man's murderous ways toward man. And he conceives the strangest project ever imagined... to become a knight-errant and sally forth into the world to right all
Wrongs. No longer shall he be plain Alonso Quijana... but a dauntless knight known as - Don Quixote de La Mancha!)
DON QUIXOTE: Hear me now
Oh thou bleak and unbearable world
Thou art base and debauched as can be;
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled
Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!
I am I, Don Quixote
The Lord of La Mancha
My destiny calls and I go
And the wild winds of fortune
Will carry me onward
Oh whithersoever they blow
Whithersoever they blow
Onward to glory I go!
SANCHO PANZA
I'm Sancho! Yes, I'm Sancho!
I'll follow my master till the end
I'll tell all the world proudly
I'm his squire! I'm his friend!
DON QUIXOTE
Hear me, heathens and wizards
And serpents of sin!
All your dastardly doings are past
For a holy endeavor is now to begin
And virtue shall triumph at last!
(Don Quixote and Sancho Panza mount their horses and set out along a road)
D.Q.: I am I, Don Quixote, (S.: I'm Sancho!)
D.Q.: The Lord of La Mancha, (S.: Yes, I'm Sancho!)
My destiny calls and I go, (S.: I'll follow my master till the end.)
D.Q.: And the wild winds of fortune Will carry me onward, (S.: I'll tell all the world proudly)
D.Q.: Oh whithersoever they blow! (S.: I'm his squire! I'm his friend!)
DON QUIXOTE, SANCHO: Whithersoever they blow
Onward to glory we go!
(At an Inn full of rough men - Muleteers - and rough women)