Angus Jackson’s RSC production at Stratford’s Swan Theatre reflects this quaint human condition and is bang on terrific. Played out on the intimate and bare stage with its vertical decking and its superb lighting, we are deep into the dreamy mind of this merrily mad old man from La Mancha who so badly wants to live out his bold delusions to return, basically, to the good old days of roving heroes.

Don Quixote is played by David Threlfall (see above) who we all know from Ripper Street, Nowhere Boy and Master and Commander. He has that crazed stare down pat; his pale eyes looking out to mid distance as he fancies up imaginary conquests and foes; his thin body radiating lost glories; his rusty voice eeking out volumes of bold nonsense. It is a comic tour de force with Threlfall on stage continually.

His illiterate squire Sanco Panza is acted by funnyman Rufus Hound: wise, round, quick-witted and, ultimately, lovingly loyal to his bonkers boss.

Jackson and writer James Fenton keep the story simple, almost a child’s fable. As a matter of fact, you can take your kids to this production because it’s so accessible. And the humour is always there cloaking the sad desperation: Don Quixote not only tilting with windmills but rudely lifted up by one; the huge armies he slaughters are furry puppet sheep and his ideal damsel is a simple rural girl who sashays past him with an irreverent wiggle.

And it is correct to put it on this year: Shakespeare and Cervantes died within days of each other 400 years ago; possibly, on the same day. Both came from humble beginnings, the former the son of a furrier from a small market town, the latter a poor forgotten soldier who languished in a slave prison for five years. Both, though, still shine. You have to ask: what current writer will be so well known four centuries hence?