In a village of York the newer, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. On week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the grounds, who used to wash the automobile as well as handle the rubbish bins.The age of this gentleman of ours was precisely 42 today; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Mirange or Mirando (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Miranda. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair’s breadth from the truth in the telling of it.
You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to writing books and lyrics with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to stage his dramas and musicals, and brought to the stage as many of them as he could manage.
One day, his wits evidently being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as for the service of his country, that he should make a production of the founding of his nation, roaming the world over with his full production and business managers in quest of bookings, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual empresarios; staging every kind of production, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himself crowned by the might of his arm Emperor of the Broad Way at least; and so, led away by the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, he set himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution.
He next proceeded to inspect his transport, which, with more quartos than a real and more blemishes than a city taxi, surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to give it, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a vehicle belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a minstrel/author, and what he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a new character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and calling he was about to follow. And so, after having composed, struck out, rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a multitude of names out of his memory and fancy, he decided upon calling it Rocinante, a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of its condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the autos in the world.
Having got a name for his transport so much to his taste, he was anxious to get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this point, till at last he made up his mind to call himself “Lin-Manuel.” And like a good knight, he resolved to add on the name of his, and to style himself Lin-Manuel of Miranda, whereby, he considered, he described accurately his origin and country, and did honour to it in taking his surname from it.
So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, his transport christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. There was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very good-looking woman with whom he had been at one time in love, though, so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter. Her name was Vanessa Nadal, upon her he thought fit to confer the title of Lady of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name which should not be out of harmony with her own, and should suggest and indicate that of a princess and great lady, he decided upon calling her his wife.
These preliminaries settled, he did not care to put off any longer the execution of his design, urged on to it by the thought of all the world was losing by his delay, seeing what wrongs he intended to right, grievances to redress, injustices to repair, abuses to remove, and stage productions to enact. So, without giving notice of his intention to anyone, and without anybody seeing him, one morning before the dawning of the day (which was one of the hottest of the month of July) he donned his best, started Rocinante, and sallied forth upon the world in the highest contentment and satisfaction at seeing with what ease he had made a beginning with his grand purpose.
In the fulness of time it came to him that the tale of the founding of his nation had not been told in rhyme, nor in the harmonies of voice and instrument common to such popular entertainments as Moana and, though it was in those days yet to come, Encanto, and he at this point determined to present such a story to his countrymen in a unique and vibrant manner. Thus fortified, if internally, our valiant stalwart forthwith brought out a book in which he used to enter the Broadness of the Way and harmoniously he served out to the donors and backers, and, with a lad carrying a dueling pistol, and the several founding characters whose mention is easily found, he returned to the stage and and, by his performance alone, bade the many audiences stand and applaud.
He was cordially welcomed by the goatherds, who were known across the land as critics, and was decorated and awarded, in celebration of his efforts, a Pulitzer Prize, three Tony Awards, three Grammys, two Emmys, two Olivier Awards and a MacArther Fellows Genius Grant. Our intrepid knight received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 30, 2018, and in 2019, the the Portrait of a Nation prize.
After this point the annals are, for now, silent, although this is not a silence drawn from inactivity, for that is not, in truth, a state our subject could evidently entertain in the least. Rather, it is because the further annals have yet to be written, and will doubtless, in time, present new quests and adventures undertaken but the gentleman whom we today scrutinize. Thus for the nonce we must say naught but happy birthday ’til next we meet, which may in truth be sooner than we may anticipate.
So January 16 is the day Don Quixote was first published in 1605, and also the day Lin-Manuel Miranda was born in 1980.