Simplex starts out in life as innocent as any child - even more so. But then the soldiers came. And Simplex takes his first stumbling step out into the wide world. He is pressed into service as a court jester and carried off by the Croats. He fights in the war, now on this side, now on that. As a fancy-free lighthearted gallant, he slips into a pretty girl's boudoir only to be escorted from it the same night as a trapped and heavyhearted husband. He acquires great wealth by robbery and sinks into poverty out of magnanimity.
First Contact: Assess human with the flawed, rudimentary, mind ... It's a moonless summer night when a severely damaged intergalactic spacecraft enters Earth's upper orbit. The alien pilot is desperate. Needs to hold up long enough to make repairs--do so before his pursuers find him. Cuddy Perkins lives a simple life with his mother, his dog Rufus, and a scattering of farm animals that still inhabit their old, dilapidated, Woodbury Tennessee ranch. He was used to the insults; retard ... simpleton ... village idiot. Momma says to just ignore them ... people can be heartless. But Cuddy already knew he was different. Ever since the accident back when he was seven. He didn't know how long ago that was, exactly, but he did know he was pretty big now--he was taller than his older brother, Kyle ... who was in prison, as well as the Woodbury Sherriff--the man who put him there. Unbeknownst to Cuddy Perkin's, his simple, uneventful, life was about to be turned completely upside down.
This book analyzes the role of the theatrical simpleton in the pasos of the sixteenth-century playwright Lupe de Rueda, in Mario Moreno’s character “Cantinflas,” and in the esquirol of the 1960s Actos of the Teatro Campesino. Spanning multiple regions and time periods, this book fills an important void in Spanish and theatrical studies.