Between the reality-fantasy tension of Sancho's great dilemma and the fixed ideals of Don Quixote's guiding principles, Cervantes focuses all the characters in his novel. More than four hundred characters appear in Don Quixote. Some are sketched in a few words, like the description of Don Antonio Morena: he is "a gentleman of good parts and plentiful fortune loving all those diversions that may innocently be obtained without prejudice to his neighbors, and not of the humor of those who would rather lose their friend than their jest." Some characters, like the duke and duchess, fulfill their characterizations without any description at all.
Most of Don Quixote's characters are developed in their relationship to the protagonist. The curate and barber, for example, try so hard to cure the madman that they themselves seem to become the evil magicians who do him the most harm, especially when they disguise themselves as necromancers in order to deliver the hero home in an oxcart. Samson Carrasco, the sophomoric bachelor from the university, has such a shallow understanding of the knight and of himself that he is at best only a false Quixote. The gentleman in green, Don Diego de Miranda, parallels the prosaic character of Alonso Quixano had the hidalgo not become a madman. Completely conventional, a half-hearted huntsman ("I keep neither falcon nor hounds but only a tame partridge and a bold ferret or two"), Don Diego has a son gifted in poetry with whom he is dissatisfied because the boy should study something more useful. The various goatherds encountered in the novel incline to be kind and generous, for they supply food to the half-insane "knight of the wood," and they treat the knight and squire with courtesy and hospitality. Chrysostom, the broken-hearted lover of Marcella, has pined to death for her favor, whereas Don Quixote, equally unsuccessful in love, sublimates his frustration and is inspired to accomplish immortal deeds. Gines de Passamonte, briefly but unforgettably sketched, is a perfect study of a typical Spanish picaroon. Living by his wits, he has many disguises and practices a variety of deceptions to gain his livelihood.
