Ah, Dulcinea, where are you my lovely?
I have lain at the feet of giants
while they spun their arms in lazy circles
in mockery of my effort.
I would have rid of the world of their fiendish flesh.
All I have done, I did in your honor.
Dulcinea, sweet, beautiful Dulcinea, where are you?
I am waiting.
Don Quixote, Don Juan de Marco, Duke Orsino, Lancelot. All knights in shining error. The heights of rom-antics and chivalry, invariably flawed and human.
Quixote, tilting at windmills, jousting with imagined giants and thoroughly trounced by his own imagination. But Dulcinea, how she gave him hope, meaning, and in the musical, how his imagination inspired her to self-respect and hope of her own.
Don Juan de Marco, played by Johnny Depp before Pirates of the Caribbean was a dream in the minds of its creators. The quixotic romantic with the delusion that he was the Don Juan of legend, loved and lost his Doña Ana. He loved, and loved, and told his story of love and whether it was delusion or truth, how he inspired the staff to love and romance.
Orsino, in love with love, claiming love for Olivia because he knew it was safe and she would never return his affection no matter how grand the gesture he made. Convinced no woman could love as he did. He learned better, first in friendship, and then in the revelation that Cesario was in truth Viola and loved him as he loved her.
Lancelot, the first knight, Knight of the Round Table. He loved Guenevere, another man’s wife and everything he did, he did in her name, openly, and in service to her. How they tried to prevent what came to pass. He exiled himself for seven years from Camelot to keep away from his Queen. All his conquests, all the repentant knights who lost in combat he sent to her for judgement when they should have been sent to Arthur. How he failed himself when he met Elaine, nearly a Guenevere herself and one he would have been free to love. And with that choice and the wind from its butterfly wings, Camelot burned.
Dulcinea, Doña Ana, Viola,
Elaine, Guenevere,
(for I love you both,
and for that my armor’s tarnished),
I am waiting.
I am a Knight in Shining Error.
Gentleman. Chivalrist.
Human.
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