And by all means include the love of applause, not from anonymous readers but from a living, breathing audience in the immediate presence of one's creation. We know each other, in the same moment in which we are ferociously competitive. To one of the profession, Cervantes is instantly recognizable as a playwright, no matter whether he is writing in play-form, poetry, or in the shape of a novel. Don Quixote, the novel, is inherently theatrical. We have mentioned delineation of character, but there is more.
Psychological motivations drive the plot.
His people change, they grow. His stories show the dynamism of the stage. His scenes are pictorial. Depiction of costume and setting are meticulous. Nowhere is it more eloquently explored than in Don Quixote.