Bloom says in his introduction that we will never know the true motives of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But just as we will never know their motives, we will never know the motives of Cide Hamete, the history’s fictive author. After all, what can we make of a devout muslim who praises the actions of this delusional Christian knight? How much irony do we ascribe to his ovations? And for that matter, what do we believe he has left out (given that the book’s second author makes claims that Hamete, “probably gave us too little rather than too much.”) Like Cervantes, Hamete’s apparent purpose is to denounce those false and degenerative books on chivalry. But Hamete’s polemic is frequently subsumed by the crackling velocity of Quixote’s narrative. Without those chivalric tomes, Quixote would still be Quixana, and the history would be not.

It’s hard to tell if Hamete is genuine in his appreciation of Quixote—and if he is, he must suffer from Quixote’s infectious madness. Many who meet Quixote find themselves pretending to Quixote’s situation—with ostensible motives of helping or mocking him. As Hamete himself points out, the duke and duchess are just as mad for going to such lengths to have fun at the expense of Quixote’s apparent madness.

I suppose Hamete sees the fulfillment of his own purpose in Quixote’s madness. Every windmill mistaken for a giant, is another knock on chivalry’s tarnished image. But even Hamete seems inconstant here. We must wonder if he would facetiously praise Quixote in Mohammed’s name. In a sense, his polemic against chivalry is his excuse for following Quixote, for pretending to his madness.