One also might argue that lying about delivering the letter to Dulcinea was a ploy by Sancho, the priest, and the barber to bring Don Quixote home, for it does appear this way to the reader. The priest and the barber tell Sancho to deliver an oral response to Don Quixote in an effort to convince him to stop all his adventuring. However, this could not be the case. If Sancho had really wanted Don Quixote to come home, he would have been able to convince his master to do so. Since Sancho plays the squire, he is a very important character in the role-playing fantasy in which he and Don Quixote are wrapped up, and therefore has much more power over his master than anyone else. The only reason Sancho would go through with such a plan is that he wants to advance the plot of the story. The priest and barber, for example, want Sancho to convince Don Quixote of trying to become an emperor rather than an archbishop. Sancho agrees and thanks them for the idea, because he knows that “emperors can do a lot more for their squires than archbishops.” (Cervantes 167).
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote. Norton: New York, 1999.
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote. Norton: New York, 1999.