from
Man of La Mancha
by
Dale Wasserman

Cervantes:
Calm yourself. There is a remedy for everything but death.

Manservant:
That could be the very one we need!

Cervantes:
And now there appears on the scene a man of breeding . . . intelligence . . . logic. He is Antonia’s fiancé, Doctor Sansón Carrasco—Bachelor of Science—graduate of the University of Salamanca! A man who carries his own self-importance as though afraid of breaking it.

Sancho:
Well, they say one madman makes a hundred and love makes a thousand.

Aldonza:
What’s that mean?

Sancho:
I’m not sure.

Don Quixote:
So learned, yet so misinformed.

Dr. Carrasco:
These are facts.

Don Quixote:
Facts are the enemy of truth.

Don Quixote:
[...] Nay, Don Quixote—take a deep breath of life and consider how it should be lived.

The Duke:
[...] Why are you poets so fascinated with madmen?

Cervantes:
I suppose . . . we have much in common.

The Duke:
You both turn your backs on life.

Cervantes:
We both select from life what pleases us.

The Duke:
A man must come to terms with life as it is!

Cervantes:
I have lived nearly fifty years, and I have seen life as it is. Pain, misery, hunger . . . cruelty beyond belief. I have heard the singing from taverns and the moans from bundles of filth on the streets. I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle . . . or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I have held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no gallant last words . . . only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question: “Why?” I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams—this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Don Quixote:
Sancho, Sancho, always thine eye sees evil in preference to good.

Sancho:
There’s no use blaming my eye; it doesn’t make the world, it only sees it.

Sancho:
[...] Of course I hit her back, Your Grace, but she’s a lot harder than I am, and you know what they say—“Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.”

Don Quixote:
Why should a man get well when he is dying? It’s such a waste of good health.