This letter of instructions is mentioned in Quevedo's 1629 dedication of his edition, published in 1631, of Fray Luis de León's poetry; the only known copy has been located by John H. Elliott, the biographer of Olivares (see also Rivers 1997). I am grateful to Dr. Emilie Bergmann for having sent me a photocopy of this document («Papers relating to Europe and the Americas, ca. 1611-1800», BANC MSS M-M 1755, no. 15); I also thank the curator of the Bancroft Collection, University of California at Berkeley, for permission eventually to publish my entire transcription. According to Dr. James O. Crosby, the handwriting and orthography seem to belong to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.

All citations from Don Quijote, except where otherwise noted, refer to Luis Andrés Murillo's edition. A substantial portion of this article was presented in Spanish as a paper at the A. I. S. O. conference at Alcalá de Henares in July, 1996. This revised and expanded version in English was written in honor of Peter Dunn.

One recent critic who finds significance in the dedication in the wider European context of the time is Roger Chartier.

See Dustin Griffin's recent monograph (2-3).

Consult the work of, among others, Werner L. Gundersheimer, S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Runiger, Robert C. Evans, Alain Viala, R. Lévy, J.-M. André, Linda Levy Peck, Cedric C. Brown, and Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake. For Spain, see the dated but still useful study by Alfonso Pardo Manuel de Villena; more recent and more serious is the work of J. Simón Díaz and D. de la Válgoma y Díaz-Varela. Edward Baker has kindly provided me with a copy of his important forthcoming article on Cervantes and patronage. See also his recently published book. Baker was apparently unable to consult Carmen Manso Porto's impressive study on the Count of Gondomar as «erudito, mecenas y bibliófilo». Eduardo Pardo de Guevara y Valdés's monograph on the Count of Lemos contains much valuable information on Cervantes's later patron.

Richard L. Kagan writes about the local historian Martín de Roa and the genre of «chorography»; Diane E. Sieber discusses the example of Ginés Pérez de Hita, who in 1572 «accepted the official commission of the Ayuntamiento of Lorca to compose the Libro de la población y hazañas de la Muy Noble y Muy Leal ciudad de Lorca, a history of the city in verse» (295).

As was the case of the poet Cristóbal de Mesa, who served as Chaplain to the Count of Castelar and later in the household of the Duke of Béjar as ayo to his son to whom Cervantes dedicated his novel. Cervantes himself served Giulio Acquaviva as «camarero» for a short time in 1570, a relatively low position, according to Jean Canavaggio, who translates the office as «valet de chambre» (50). Such a position in the house of a nobleman -especially that of Acquaviva who would soon become a cardinal- carried with it some prestige, and was important enough to require Cervantes to prove his hidalguía. Maxime Chevalier refers to other writers of the time (Luis Milán, Jorge de Montemayor, Antonio de Torquemada, Luis Gálvez de Montalvo...) who were attached to noble households (23-4). Rodrigo Castro Osorio (1523-1600), bishop of Zamora and Cuenca, was the patron of «historiadores y poetas, como Francisco de Salinas, Pablo de Céspedes, Luis de Castilla, Francisco de Pachecho, Vázquez de Lecea [sic?], Argote de Molina, Francisco de Medina, Juan de los Ángeles, Juan García de Vaamonde, Bernardino de Escalante, Alonso de Cabrera...» (Pardo de Guevara y Valdés 237-8).

Franciso Rico argues that the dedication was not written by Cervantes or even by Francisco Robles, but perhaps by one of the «autores de la casa» (332): «... en el primer pliego del Quijote, un pliego sin Cervantes, la firma de la dedicatoria sea falsa por partida doble. Ni autor ni editor podían dejar aún de llegarse a la sombra de algún Duque de Béjar;...» (334). It could also be argued, however, that given the irony in Cervantes's narrative in general, «el plagio de la dedicatoria, para nosotros tan escandaloso» (Rico 320) was doubly ironic: he employed various phrases from other dedications in the same way that he interlarded his novel with references and texts from other sources, knowing that some of his more experienced readers would get his inside jokes. (See Guillermo Carrascón: 178.) This did not mean, however, that he took the patronage system any less seriously, as attested by repeated efforts to put himself in a position to receive favors throughout his life. It may well be the case that his unsuccessful attempts and the cynicism they produced found ironic responses in his literary work of which we have long been aware (see below).

What follows is a summary of Viala's comments. See also the studies by R. Lévy, J.-M. André, Gundersheimer, Eisenstadt and Runiger.

See also the collection of studies edited by Cedric C. Brown, Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake. Robert C. Evans describes the relationship as involving «more than how writers were paid, the way they made their livings. It involved, more fundamentally, how they lived their lives» (23).