Missed Opportunity: The Lyrics for ‘Man of La Mancha’

Yes, we celebrated Earth Day (and also my brother's birthday), and what could be more consequential than that?

Still, moving a few notches down the "significance" scale--or perhaps not--we discover that it's also the 409th anniversary (on April 22, 1616) of the death of Miguel de Cervantes.

Cervantes' greatest creation, Don Quixote, a lower-class (dare I say deplorable?) fellow who was driven to fantasies of heroism due to his mid-life immersion in, and obsession with, works of knightly valor, remains the most celebrated of Spanish literary characters, one whose quest to restore chivalric values to a society he thinks has abandoned them first involves his going mad (always a good start), and then--eventually and after a series of unlikely adventures during most of which he mistakes what's taking place in the real world for figments of his fevered and highly colored imagination--resuming his own identity, and, shortly before dying, writing a will in which he threatens the disinheritance of his niece if she ever has anything to do with any man who has ever read a book about chivalry. (By this time, it's evident that Quixote--or "Alonzo Quixano" as he should more properly be called--has, while coming to terms with his impending death and preparing to meet his God, finally come back down to earth.)

Most folks these days have likely never read Cervantes' Don Quixote. ("Dead European male," and all that.) More, perhaps--if only via the influence of high-school and community theater musical productions--might be familiar with the play Man of La Mancha, or even its rather mangled--and overly-dubbed--version presented in a movie starring Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren from 1972.

Man of La Mancha premiered as a non-musical play on CBS television in 1959; Some time later, the concept was optioned out, and work began on the musical version. The music was assigned to Mitch Leigh, and the lyrics to... Wait for it...

W.H. Auden.

Auden's tenure as lyricist didn't last long, as his cynical and satirical take on his leading character didn't really fit the optimistic tone that Dale Wasserman, who wrote the book for the play, was striving for.

Wasserman apparently thought that dreaming "the impossible dream" was worthwhile; Auden not so much. Here's how their exchange on the matter was described in The Guardian:

What Wasserman wanted was for Auden to write the lyric which eventually became "Impossible Dream". But Auden wrote something diametrically opposed. Here's how the argument went, as recounted by Wasserman:

[Auden] "Your words are existentialist."

[Wasserman] "They are also fatalistic."

[Auden] "They are the proper words for Don Quixote."

[Wasserman] "They are not for Dale Wasserman."

The article later goes on to explain that Auden's vision of the play's finale--that Quixote should repudiate his quest and warn others against similar folly (pretty consistent with the Cervantes story)-- really didn't sit well with the Broadway vision of Dale Wasserman, one which took enormous liberties with the original tale, in favor of one which celebrated the victory of fantasy over reality and hope over circumstance. (For some reason, this bit reminds me of the line in Meredith Willson's The Music Man: "I always think there's a band, kid.")

If only that were true. I live in hope that it actually is. (If the USA can't make it so, then I don't know who can.)

Whether or not Auden's "dream" was more consonant with Cervantes', not long after he was hired, Auden was fired, and the--at that point--largely unknown Joe Darion, whose worldview was presumably more in line with the play's writers and funders, was found to replace him. (First given the option to "fix" Auden's lyrics, Darion turned the job down, but later--after being assured he'd have a free hand--he took it on, and after a bit of tap-dancing with the prospect of Rex Harrison in the lead, the original Broadway role, and the iconic song, was given to Richard Kiley.)

It continues to be an interesting question. How would Man of La Mancha have turned out, had Auden's original lyrics been allowed to prevail? Most of them seem to have been lost to the sands of time.

And yet.

There's a lovely Auden poem, "Ode to the Medieval Poets," the whole of which can be found here, and which begins:

Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your
brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage,
without anaesthetics or plumbing,
in daily peril from witches, warlocks,

lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries
burning as they came, to write so cheerfully...

A poem which juxtaposes reality and imagination in such a way that it makes me wonder if--just perhaps--somewhere inside himself, and despite his many protestations to the contrary, Auden--like so many other damaged souls in the world--actually might have occasionally seen through to the awful unacknowledged truth, one which showed that, through terrible pain, it is still possible to write about, and sing about, moments of great beauty, great hope, and indestructible truth.