Monologues from Man of La Mancha

Miguel de Cervantes: I shall impersonate a man. His name is Alonso Quijana, a country squire no longer young. Being retired, he has much time for books. He studies them from morn till night and often through the night and morn again, and all he reads oppresses him; fills him with indignation at man's murderous ways toward man. He ponders the problem of how to make better a world where evil brings profit and virtue none at all; where fraud and deceit are mingled with truth and sincerity. He broods and broods and broods and broods and finally his brains dry up. He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project ever imagined---to become a knight-errant, and sally forth into the world in search of adventures; to mount a crusade; to raise up the weak and those in need. He persuades his neighbor, one Sancho Panza, a country laborer, and an honest man, if the poor may be called honest, for he was poor indeed to become his squire. He selects an ancient carthorse called Rocinante, to be the steed and the safeguard of his master's will. These preparations made, he seizes his lance! No longer will he be plain Alonso Quijana, but a dauntless knight known as Don Quixote de La Mancha!