CU-MA-Eng-SEM-IV-Specialization I - Postcolonial Drama-Second Draft

MASTER OF ARTS ENGLISH SEMESTER IV POSTCOLONIAL DRAMA MAE-622

First Published in 2021 All rights reserved. No Part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Chandigarh University. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this book may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. This book is meant for educational and learning purpose. The authors of the book has/have taken all reasonable care to ensure that the contents of the book do not violate any existing copyright or other intellectual property rights of any person in any manner whatsoever. In the event the Authors has/ have been unable to track any source and if any copyright has been inadvertently infringed, please notify the publisher in writing for corrective action. 2 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

CONTENTS Unit – 1 Introduction To Nigerian Theatre............................................................................. 4 Unit – 2 Nigeria: Wole Soyinka: Death And The King’s Horseman..................................... 22 Unit - 3 Manjula Padmanabhan:Harvest .............................................................................. 55 Unit - 4 Introduction To Australian Theatre......................................................................... 75 Unit - 5 Jack Davis: No Sugar ............................................................................................. 90 Unit - 6 Introduction To Canadian Theatre ........................................................................ 127 Unit – 7 Ann-Marie Macdonald: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) ............... 138 Unit – 8 Pakistan: Hanif Kureishi: My Beautiful Laundrette.............................................. 152 Unit – 9 Introduction To Caribbean Theatre ...................................................................... 168 Unit – 10 Caribbean: Derek Walcott: Dream On Monkey Mountain.................................. 192 3 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 1 INTRODUCTION TO NIGERIAN THEATRE STRUCTURE 1.0 Learning Objectives 1.1 Introduction to Nigerian Theatre 1.2 Post-Colonial Literature 1.3 Theatre and Drama 1.4 Evolution and Development of Nigerian Theatre and Drama 1.5 Modern Theatre Tradition 1.6 Literary Drama 1.7 The Nigerian Media 1.8 Relevance 1.9 Drama or Mere Ritual 1.10 Theatre and Drama in Western Nigeria 1.11 The Yoruba Travelling Theatre 1.12 Summary 1.13 Keywords 1.14 Learning Activities 1.15 Unit End Questions 1.16 References 1.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Know Nigerian Theatre and Drama  Identify their Rituals in Theatre  Examine Theatre and Drama in Western Nigeria 1.1 INTRODUCTION TO NIGERIAN THEATRE More than three-quarters of the people living in the world today have had their lives shaped by the experience of colonialism. It is easy to see how important this has been in the political and economic spheres, but its general influence on the perceptual frameworks of contemporary peoples is often less evident. Literature offers one of the most important ways in which these 4 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

new perceptions are expressed and it is in their writing, and through other arts such as painting, sculpture, music, and dance that the day-to-day realities experienced by colonized peoples have been most powerfully encoded and so profoundly influential. 1.2 POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE The term ‘post-colonial’ is used to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression. We also suggest that it is most appropriate as the term for the new cross-cultural criticism which has emerged in recent years and for the discourse through which this is constituted. In this sense this book is concerned with the world as it exists during and after the period of European imperial domination and the effects of this on contemporary literatures. The literatures of African countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Pacific Island countries, and Sri Lanka are all postcolonial literatures. The literature of the USA should also be placed in this category. Perhaps because of its current position of power, and the neo-colonizing role it has played, its post-colonial nature has not been generally recognized. But its relationship with the metropolitan centre as it evolved over the last two centuries has been paradigmatic for postcolonial literatures everywhere. What each of these literatures has in common beyond their special and distinctive regional characteristics is that they emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this which makes them distinctively post-colonial. 1.3 THEATRE AND DRAMA When someone claims to be interested in studying theatre and drama, little would he know what it actually entails. For one, the person might take it to mean a study of acting and dance. The person may even be ignorant of basic concepts in theatre and drama. However, Theatre involves quite a number of professions fused in one. It involves such aspects as creative writing, costume and make-up, management, design, media, as well as acting which is the most visible to the public. Hence theatre and drama may mean just acting to many who may be ignorant of what theatre actually is. The concept of theatre and drama is quite clear. But scholars may take it from different perspectives. The word theatre according Omatsola, quoting from the Virtues English Dictionary is taken from the Latin word “theater on,” meaning” I see,” or view. It is therefore 5 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

taken to represent a place where action is seen or viewed. In effect then, theatre is the building where action takes place. Drama, on the other hand, is rooted in the Greek word “drao” meaning, “I do” or “I act.” Aristotle in his Poetics explains in practical terms that drama is the “imitation of an action. “This is where acting comes in - that is, imitating an action that has taken place either in reality or in the mind of one who has conceived the action. It is in the light of the foregoing explanation that one agrees with Geoffrey Axworthy’s definition of drama and theatre as: “Theatre is the building and drama is the doing”. In view of the above brief conceptual analysis, Nigerian theatre and drama can be defined as the totality of the Nigerian theatrical heritage ranging from the traditional to the modem as well as that of the new millennium. It involves also the media system as epitomized in the broadcast media. 1.4 EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIAN THEATRE AND DRAMA The origin of theatre and drama is the focus of the book Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Critical Source Book, edited by Yemi Ogunbiyi (1981). This origin captures the fact that theatre and drama are not separated from the dynamics of society. Thus, the need to adapt to environmental challenges compelled man to evolve division of labour along lines of specialization of tasks such as strategic planning, food gathering war and celebration of victory over enemies and so on. These led to rites involving dances which enhanced the achievement of desires through auto suggestion induced by these rituals. It is this process which some refer to as magic that aided the pre-historic Nigerian to exercise control over the natural forces that determined his existence. Regularity of these rites resulted in their becoming rituals. Later modifications led to changes as there was better understanding of certain mythical phenomena which now became isolated and acted out as drama. Nigerian drama origins can he situated in the various traditional, religious and functional rituals found in virtually every Nigerian community. However. the evolutionary transition from ritual to drama is difficult to ascertain. For example, Adediji’s attempt at a historical development, through quite a milestone, does not fully cluecidate the period of this transition. In his treatise, “Alarinjo: “The Traditional Yoruba Travelling Theatre (1979), he opines that Sango as Alafin of Oyo in the 14th century brought about ancestral worship which became a festival by the I6th century in which lineage groups presented dances. According to him, the refinement of those entertainment aspects marked strictly for entertainment, resulted in the birth of the Yoruba traveling theatre by 1700. However, interaction with other cultures led to modification of style. This resulted in further 6 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

evolution into what can now be termed the modem dances which enhanced the achievement of’ desires through auto suggestion induced by these rituals. It is this process which some refer to as magic that aided the pre-historic Nigerian to exercise control over the natural forces that determined his existence. Regularity of these rites resulted in their becoming rituals. Later modifications led to changes as there was better understanding of certain mythical phenomena which now became isolated and acted out as drama. Thus Nigerian drama origins can be situated in the various traditional, religious and functional rituals found in virtually every Nigerian community However, interaction with other cultures led to modification of style. This resulted in further evolution into what can now be termed the modern era of Nigerian theatre and drama. The modern era is characterized by influence of Western education, as well as the church. 1.5 MODERN THEATRE TRADITION This tradition started with the return of freed slaves from the Americas. The return began in 1839. These freed slaves were joined by Brazilian emigrants to form the nucleus of the educated middle class. They brought Western and European forms of concert. They settled mostly in Lagos whose growing population was obviously in dire need of recreational facilities. This compelled Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Robert Campbell and others to found “The Academy in 1866 - a social and cultural Centre for public enlightenment, dedicated to the promotion of the arts, science and culture. Here, music and drama were performed. However, the audience was mostly an elite audience. By 1890, a schism occurred in the church leading to the foundation of several other churches. This resulted in the need for a truly African church that uses Nigerian language and music. The competition for converts led to the adoption of masquerade songs which were reworked into church songs and used to win converts. This was in addition to actual drama during worship, known then as “native air,” and consisting of native songs and dances. The church also started sponsoring drama from 1902. One such drama “King Elejigho” became the prototype of Yoruba traditional drama between 1902 and 1920. It was into this era of Nigerian drama and theatre that Hubert Ogunde was born. It must he noted that up till the emergence of Ogunde, the drama was largely for an elitist audience mainly constituted by those who had Western education. The entry of Ogunde into the scene in 1944 changed the landscape. His earliest documented effort was his play “Worse than Crime” (1945) which presented colonialism as a system that is worse than crime. According to Akinwale, he produced “Strike and Hunger “which expressed the hopeless condition of labour in colonial Nigeria at the time. Other popular dramatists who emulated Ogunde include Kola Ogunnola, Duro Ladipo, Ojo Ladipo. Moses 7 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Olaiya Adejumo and several other travelling theatre troupes. Ogunde’s influence spanned over four decades until his demise in 1989. It was while Ogunde and fellow traveling theatres were bestriding the Nigerian landscape that the era of literary drama was born 1.6 LITERARY DRAMA The era of literary drama is traced from the first play to be published. This refers to scripted plays and the first is, “This is our Chance’ written in 1956 by James Ene Henshaw. This dovetailed into the introduction of drama course, at the Premier University of Ibadan in 1957 as part of the educational Theatre of the English Department. It was the same year that some expatriates, mostly university lecturers and civil servants got together with their Nigerian friends to form the Arts Theatre production group. Another group, formed by graduates, largely resident in Ibadan in 1959 adopted the name Players of the Dawn. However, most of the plays they performed were ancient Greek plays. Impetus for development came through Wole Soyinka who returned from his study at Leeds University in 1960 and formed the 1960 Marks, which absorbed the members of the Players of the Dawn. From then, plays by Soyinka such as “The Trials of brother Jero”, “The Swamp Dwellers” and “A Dance the Forest” premiered. These gave a new cultural consciousness to the Nigerian theatre With the establishment of a theatre programme at the University of Ibadan in 1962 by Geoffrey Axworthy, more plays were written and performed. The students later took these plays from the confines of the university of Ibadan to secondary schools and other halls. By the 1970s theatre and drama had become popular university programmes and today, they are part of the curriculum in the various colleges of education. It must be noted that theatre and drama are not limited to stage plays. The study of theatre and drama include media arts. It is pertinent to now discuss the evolution and development of the Nigerian mass media. 1.7 THE NIGERIAN MEDIA Although the mass media includes radio, television, cinema, newspapers and magazines only radio, television and cinema (film) are of significance to the study of theatre arts. The first of these three to evolve is film which was shown in the world for the first time in 1895 in Paris. Film was first shown in Nigeria in 1903 at the Glover Hall, Lagos. The British colonialists established the colonial film unit when it was discovered that film could be used to mobilize support for the allied forces during the Second World War. This became the Federal film unit 8 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

in 1947 which produced films. Most films made at this time were documentaries which sought to show the supposedly good works of the colonialist towards developing the African. Some of such films are “Empire Day Celebrations” (1948) and “Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Nigeria in 1956”. By the l960s feature films started to be produced. But the first feature film by Nigerians and written by a Nigerian is “Kongi’ s Harvest” by Wole Soyinka which was produced in 1970. Radio came next. Although radio had been in existence since the first decade of the 20th century. It only became part of our life in 1951 However, radio drama first hit the Nigerian airwaves in 1959. It was after the first drama, a pidgin English drama titled “Save Journey” that other radio stations started drama on radio. Today, virtually all radio stations in the country have their own productions both in English and other Nigerian languages. Television was established in Nigeria by the then Western Region Government, led by the Action Group Political leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in October 1959. However, drama started on television in 1960. The first play was, “My father’s Burden” written by Wole Soyinka. Since then, Nigerian television has played host to a lot of plays, especially between the 1970s and the 1990s when each station had a drama programme by which it was identified. There were serials, such as “village Headmaster”, “Masquerade”, “Hotel de Jordan”, “Koko Close” and so on. Today television with satellite broadcasting is more popular than the cinema which it has equally domesticated. 1.8 RELEVANCE Theatre and drama have been performing a lot of functions in the world. The same holds for Nigeria. First, drama educates. The plays performed on stage, radio and television tell the people about themselves. The information passed on could be used to aid development. So in effect, theatre and drama contribute to national development. Again, comedies entertain the people who watch or listen to them, while at the same time they receive valuable information they need for their social development. Theatre and drama can be used for historical documentation. History plays, such as “Ovonranmwen Nogbaisi” and “Kurunmi,” both by Ola Rotimi are important documents of Bini and Yoruba history. Thus, theatre and drama help to transmit elements of culture from generation to generation. It has also been proved that drama is therapeutic. Drama, apart from being used for physical and mental development, has been used to cure neurotic and psychotic ailments. Finally, drama can be used to unify the people. One of the ways the Warri crisis was settled was the use of a unifying concert which took place at the Warri stadium in 2004. 9 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Theatre and drama are part and parcel of the Nigerian society. They have contributed and will continue to contribute to the development of the society through their various functions. Hence their relevance is not in doubt. Their development will continue to be according to the dictates and dynamics of the society. Nigeria will continue to evolve the kind of theatre and drama it deserves because theatre and drama, being part of the society cannot operate outside the confines of the society. Drama and Theatre Contrasted: “Theatre” comes from the Greek “theatron”; a place for viewing or “theasthai”; to look at, and “Drama”, has its origins from the Greek word, “Dran”, meaning “action”. The other related term, “Play” is conceptually defined as a dramatic composition written for performance by actors on a stage, television/radio or public arena. Hence, the twin terms “Drama/Play and Theatre” are here used interchangeably in some places as they overlap and dovetail. Furthermore, drama tells a story through the words and actions of actors, who impersonate the characters on stage. Precisely, it is an adaptation, recreation and reflection of reality on stage. According to Boulton (2013), “a play (Drama) is not really a piece of literature for reading. It is the literature that walks and talks before our eyes”. Boulton states that the text of the play is meant to be translated into sights, sounds and actions, which occur literally and physically on stage. Therefore, while ‘play’ can be a text or a published book in which drama is written, theatre is the performance with all dramatic paraphernalia (effects) or the place where the dramatic text is performed. As a concept, theatre is a form of art in which a series of lifelike events is acted out. In a broader sense, theatre brings reality close, as it includes all the aspects of play production such as actors, direction, scene, costume, sound and lighting designers, the playwright and, the audience. All these elements normally work together to form a special production that gives a semblance of reality. Hence, Brockett and Hildy (2014) reason that theatre is an extremely multifaceted institution encircling all the aspects of life. Also, Wilson and Goldfarb (2005) opine that theatre is an activity that we use to describe how we live. Thus, it is a recreation of life. By staging it, the recreation becomes a sort of complex sharing or interaction between performer and audience, which is the essence of theatre. This is because films and videos provide mere image, but live theatre brings an interactive contact as the audience can actively influence the performance with their responses, such as loud boos, cries, and groans. It is a spellbinding session, a sheer excitement that carries the audience along. It is that special indefinable quality that draws people to the theatre. Wilson (1998) explains this performer-audience relationship: The experience of being in the presence of the performer is more important than anything else. With a film, no matter how closely it follows the story of a play, no matter how involved we are with the people on screen, we are always in the presence of an image, never a person. Furthermore, Wilson quotes the drama critic, Walter Kerr (1913-1996), who in his We Call It ‘Live’ Theatre, But Is It? (1972) elaborates the idea as follows: It doesn’t just mean that we are in the personal presence of 10 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

performers. It means that they are in our presence, conscious of us, speaking to us, working for and with us until a circuit that is not mechanical becomes established between us, a circuit that is fluid, unpredictable, ever-changing in its impulses, crackling, intimate. Our presence, the way we respond, flows back to the performer and alters what he does, to some degree and sometimes astonishingly so this never happens at a film because the film is already built, finished, sealed, incapable of responding to us in any way. The actors can’t hear us or feel our presence; nothing we do, in our liveliness, counts. We could be dead, and the film would purr out its appointed course, flawlessly, indifferently in addition, theatre resembles most intimately the patterns of people’s experience and offers simultaneously meaning and entertainment. It gives a performance that lives on as memory. Therefore, theatre is not a form of “fine” art, but functional art. Its essence lies in its tradition of “immediacy” and not in the written text. Theatre is also exceptional in that it includes almost all the other art forms in various ways. In modern life, there are many examples of performances that utilize theatrical elements. Examples include musical videos, staged productions based on films and extravaganzas or Olympiads’ opening events. An example of the crossover of theatrical elements between the popular art of today and traditional theatre is the elaborate presentations of Rock Groups. For instance, Wilson cites Madonna, at a certain show, stating: my show is not a conventional Rock Show, but a theatrical presentation of my music. And like theatre, it asks questions, provokes thought, and takes you on an emotional journey, portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, redemption and salvation Hence, among the genres of literature, theatre is the most socially involved in community life. This is because it has a more striking impact on audience and can arguably be an instrument for social transformation, an instrument for molding and shaping people’s attitudes towards their society and also a social force that awakens revolutionary consciousness in the socially and culturally oppressed, exploited and deprived people. 1.9 DRAMA OR MERE RITUAL According to Banham and Wake, “the roots of Theatre in Africa are ancient”. This shows that theatre performance in Africa began from time immemorial. However, this claim has been disputed by some African and non-African scholars alike who assert that it began only after the coming of European Colonial Whites. Based on the Aristotelian concept of drama, which makes emphasis on Imitation, Plot and Dialogue, Finnegan (1980) declares that theatre did not exist in African society before colonization. She describes pre-colonial African Theatre as mere Cultural Commodity, Mytho-ritual re- enactments or Pseudo, Un-programmed Theatre. This creates controversy among African Theatre scholars. Nevertheless, the following argument ensues due to indigenous Africans being KAKAKI animists (people who believe that all natural things, such as plants, animals, rocks and thunder, have spirits and can influence their lives), masquerades and other ritualistic performances are familiar phenomena. At the time of 11 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

these performances, a drama-like situation existed. Ogundeji (2000) cited in Dasylva explains: During the (ancestral) festivals, masks of the dead fathers are brought out using theatrical effects as a means of ritual celebration. Masquerading is, in addition, used for purposes other than sacred or cultic function. It is, for example, used for political, judicial and entertainment purposes. These other functions, however, are generally considered secondary Furthermore, J. C. de Graft (1976) suggests, the term (African) ‘drama’ seems to cover almost every form of social expression that may be said to incorporate movement and gesture: singing, drumming, dancing, all ceremonial behavior, enstoolment and destoolment of chiefs, child naming, circumcision rites, hunting, drinking palm wine, and eating goat’s meat - literally everything. This shows that African Theatre is different from Western Theatre in the sense that the Western type is practically divided into: (1) Drama - for the spoken word; (2) Ballet and Mime - for dance; (3) Music - in concerts and operas; and (4) Fine Arts for painting and sculpture. But African Theatre incorporates them all in a complex and totally integrated, indivisible dramatic performance. It is a cultural manifestation and the creative arts combined with religion and politics to become functional and relevant to the community that is involved, many times having not only an entertainment value, but a didactic function. It draws Lawan, Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Survey 265 on themes relevant to the community it serves and provides a forum to communicate with the community. These expressionistic, communal and holistic features of indigenous African Theatre oppose the individualistic and fragmented nature of Western Theatre. This is because “African life is Drama. Drama is life; it is interwoven throughout every aspect of the African’s existence and experience” 1.10 THEATRE AND DRAMA IN WESTERN NIGERIA To begin with, Theatre and Drama in Nigeria, as in other places in Africa, both have their beginning in traditional festivals and religious rituals. Ossie Enekwe and J. A. Adedeji identify these phenomena as the genesis of Drama in Nigeria. They are of the opinion that “Drama and Ritual are reciprocal in function and similar in structure, since one can easily lead to the other, depending on the context”. This assertion substantiates the view that early Nigerian Drama and Theatre were not guided by the Aristotelian model. However, this conception was challenged by different critics, such as Echeruo, who argues that traditional festivals are not drama but rituals. Echeruo contends that Festivals and Rituals are performances without Plot and Dialogue and, without these elements, cannot therefore be termed Drama. Furthermore, he argues that “there must be a story to be enacted or imitated for a performance to be classified as Drama”. Rotimi subscribes to Echeruo’s proposition that Imitation is necessary in drama and that “any Ritual display which contains “mimetic impulse” ought to be classified as Drama, not Ritual”. Uka summarises this view as follows; KAKAKI what is usually called traditional drama, is not yet drama. It is the huge legacy upon which drama may draw and draw with ever 12 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

increasing returns, what some usually and glibly call traditional drama is properly and essentially elements of drama Nevertheless, the theory of the development of drama in Nigeria through traditional and religious agencies was well established. The performances of ‘anthropomorphic representatives’ of ancestral spirits at egungun or Masquerades have, in one way or the other, contributed or influenced the evolution of Drama and Theatre in Nigeria. From the bygone pre-colonial era, Sango, the Alaafin of Oyo, who reigned in the fourteenth century, introduced Masquerade that culminated in present-day drama. Sango started this phenomenon initially as ancestor-worship called baba (father) or later egungun (masquerade). Adedeji (1972), explains, The egungun is the dead lineage-head who, upon being evoked, appears as a costumed figure. The evocation takes place at a special ceremony designed to give the impression that the deceased is making a temporary appearance on earth. Thus, Sango, after failing to secure the remains of his father, Oranyan, the founder of Oyo, for burial at Oyo after the latter had died at Ife and, so said, metamorphosed into a stone staff, he (Sango) designed this dramatic performance to represent the spirit of his late father. Adedeji (1972) continues: Sango brought the reincarnated spirit of his father to the outskirts of Oyo, set up the ‘Bara’ (royal mausoleum) for his worship and placed ‘Iyamode’ (the old woman of the palace) in charge of the mystery. Her duty was to worship Oranyan’s spirit and to bring him out as a masquerade during an evocation ceremony. Later this Lawan, Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Survey 267 ceremony of bringing the spirit of the deceased head of the lineage to the homestead became formalized as a permanent feature of Yoruba funeral ceremony (p. 255). Sometime in the 16th century, during the reign of Alaafin Ogbolu, Adedeji reveals that this performance evolved into a court entertainment. According to Ogunbiyi, “the refinement and perfection of those aspects, ostensibly for purely entertainment purposes, marked, by 1700, the birth of Yoruba Theatre”. However, owing to its cultural and religious shade, this form of drama, until 1980s, had been the preserve of the indigenous language theatres outside university walls. By the early 80s, a new development surfaced when English Theatre professionalism took over. Some students and even their Theatre teachers began acting plays of an English ‘flavor’ outside schools and universities. John Pepper Clark with his PEC Repertory Theatre in Lagos in 1982 is a perfect example. Historically, therefore, the Aristotelian-like Theatre tradition in Nigeria began, first, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Lagos, when a certain pseudo-English Theatre tradition thrived, featuring well-known English concerts and operas. Soon, the tradition spread, and more concert groups emerged in lbadan and Abeokuta. The westernized elite happened to be both the actors and the audience. Then, people began agitating for works based on indigenous Nigerian themes or issues. History shows that there was, somehow, an unpromising response because, in the early decades of the twentieth century, politics arrived in Nigeria and drew the attention of many of the prominent stars of the leading Lagos Theatre Movement. Stars such as Herbert Macaulay soon found politics more lucrative than Theatre and, unhesitatingly KAKAKI abandoned the 13 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

stage for political platforms. For almost three decades, there was no notable development in the Nigerian Theatre until Hubert Ogunde came into existence in 1944. 1.11 THE YORUBA TRAVELLING THEATRE Nigerian Theatre and Drama suggests two broad classifications of Nigerian forms of drama ₋ Traditional and Literary forms. He further explains, the Traditional forms can be further split into three sub- sections; Dramatic ritual, the Popular tradition and Yoruba travelling theatre. Dramatic ritual will include traditional festivals, whether they be held in celebration of cult or ancestral heroes, ritual ceremonies where Drama is patently discernible, serious masquerade plays (as distinct from the light ones) etc. The term “popular is used in its usual sense- that is, art intended to be popular, art that is commonly approved and widely liked by the ‘common’ people in an ever-growing urban culture. The term is used in the finest tradition of a genuinely popular theatre where all that a living, popular performer needs is, not necessarily a text or an elaborate stage, but rather, a place, a time, an audience and himself. In this category one must include all those plays in which amusement and entertainment are cited as the foremost functions. From this, one can infer that theatre in Nigeria developed gradually with Alarinjo, the traditional Yoruba Travelling Theatre, in the West as the trail blazer. Alarinjo flourished from the late forties well into the late eighties when Television, Film and Video Productions replaced it. This travelling Theatre tradition was a success to the extent that about a hundred different theatre groups came on stage crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country. The notable personalities that championed this Travelling Theatre were the famous Ogunde and his contemporaries, Duro Ladipo and Kola Ogunmola. Oloye Hubert Adedeji Ogunde (31 May 1916 – 4 April 1990) was an actor, playwright, theatre manager and musician, who founded the Ogunde Concert Party in 1945, the first professional theatrical company in Nigeria. Ogunbiyi, (1981), asserts, Ogunde’s arrival on the scene in 1944 was to determine the course of Yoruba theatre for over three decades. Freeing the so-called “Native Air Opera” from the strict confines of the church and monotonous church rhythms, Ogunde imbued the “opera” with a sprinkling of Yoruba music and dances. Therefore, Ogunde was the first professional theatre man in Nigeria described as “the Father of Nigerian Theatre or the father of contemporary Yoruba Theatre”. Ogunde, together with his colleagues, stimulated and quickened a wonderful development in the Nigerian theatre. By way of elaboration, these dramatists systematized their performances by always starting them with the traditional drumming, dancing and invocation of the metaphysical realm and deities. Duro Ladipo, for instance, was responsible for bringing the myths of Sango and some other Yoruba deities to the international stage by improvising a ritualized stage in which Yoruba deities, such as Sango, Oya and Moremi, thundered back to life in an amazing way. Hubert Ogunde, on his part, was popular with his operatic (a balance of speech and music) Travelling Theatre, which created a 14 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

certain awareness of the modern theatre tradition in Nigeria. He took his plays to various parts of the country and even further to some West African countries such as Ghana. His plays have religious, political and social themes. Among them are titles like Garden of Eden, Strike and Hunger, Nebuchadnezzar’s Feign, Herbert Macaulay, Journey to Heaven, Tiger’s Empire and Yoruba Ronu (Yoruba rethink). At times, Ogunde came to be at loggerheads with the government and on particular occasions had his plays banned. In the formative years of his theatre, Ogunde faced the challenge of the frequent resignation of his actresses, and this posed a great threat to his career. The actresses would leave the company whenever they got married and their husbands, because of a stigma attached to the career, objected to the business and forcefully, sometimes, stopped them. Ogunde then solved this problem in a practical way by resorting to marrying virtually all his actresses. This ended his tribulations. Hausa Traditional Performances Traditional musicians, entertainers and singers began what is now called Literary Drama in Hausaland. Scholars such as U.B. Ahmed (1985); I.Y. Yahaya (1991); Ames and King (1971); Kofoworola, Z. (1981); and Furniss, G. (1996) have studied their performances and described them as popular tradition or dramatic ritual that originated the Literary Drama as we know it today. There were Yankama (burlesque artists), who parody admonitions, serious religious songs and famous praise songs. “In each case, and again typical of Yan Kamanchi, the comical pastiche, involves the substitution of the topic of food for the serious subject of the original”. There was Yan Gambara -strolling minstrels (Kofoworola & Lateef, 1987) or rap artists (Ahmad & Furniss, 1994) - who deployed two or three people interacting with each other as they move through markets and other public places. They use rhythmic style of speech to express funny anecdotes, exaggerated self-praise and banter with one another. Furthermore, there were also Wawan Sarki (King’s Jester) and Yan hoto (dancer-jugglers), who, according to Kofoworola and Lateef are associated with farmers, [they] throw heavy hoes high in the air and then catch them during dance routines to the accompaniment of drumming. There were also Yan tauri (tough men) “who perform endurance tricks with sharp blades”, Yan dabo, magicians specialising in sleight of hand, Yan wasan wuta, performing feasts with red hot metal, and finally Gardawa, who perform with dangerous animals like snakes, hyenas and scorpions. Also, there was a certain Dramatic Ritual, Bori- the spirit-possession cult. Furniss, (1996), described it as follows: As a cult of affliction, people come to it to resolve physical and psychological problems. Cure involves initiation through participation in sessions where people, in trance, are ‘mounted’ by a particular spirit. They then speak as mediums for the spirit riding upon the adept’s shoulders. The calling of the spirit involves the use of drums, shouted epithets, dance and a typical fall upon the buttocks by the adept as trance approaches. As in the case of Masquerade, present-day Hausa theatrical and video television arts are driven from these mimetic performances. Furthermore, there are other “familiar acting traditions” in Hausaland that lie in the background. These performances include Wasan Gauta, Kalankuwa 15 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

and Tashe. Wasan Gauta is a drama-like performance in which women of the royal household enact an entertaining play that imitates events in the court. A similar play, Kalankuwa, is enacted by and for ordinary people, sometimes, immediately after harvest. Tashe is a series of mini performances that go on through the second ten days of the month of Ramadhan, normally at nightfall. “It involves moving from house to house enacting a particular scene and very often by being given Sadaqa ‘alms’ by the householders so entertained”. The scripted play of the modern period began in Hausaland in the 40s when Rupert East, a British colonial officer, published Six Hausa Plays. Yahaya (1991) reports that students then went on to sketch out their own plays and directed their fellow students in putting on their own productions. The students included Malam Aminu Kano (Kai Wanene a Kasuwar Kano and Gudumar Dukan En-En Kano), Yusif Maitama Sule, Alhaji Dogondaji (Malam Inkuntum), Shuaibu Makarfi (Zamanin Nan Namu -1959- and Jatau Na Kyallu - 1960- which both arose out of adapted radio programmes) and Abubakar Tunau Marafa (Wasan Marafa- 1943-). Other playwrights of the period included Mohammed Sada (Uwar Gulma- 1968) and Adamu Dan Goggo (Tabarmar Kunya, co- authored with David Hofstad known as Dauda Kano- 1969). Then there were four plays by Umaru Balarabe Ahmed (Bora da Mowa - 1972). There were also translations, such as Ibrahim Yaro Yahaya’s Daren Sha Biyu -1971 (a translation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night), Ahmed Sabir’s Mutanen Kogo - 1976 (a translation of Tawfiq al-Hakim’s People of the Cave) and Dahiru Idris’ Matsolon Attajiri -1981 (a translation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice) and so on. Literary Drama This is a trend started by James Ene Henshaw (1924- 2007), the first recognised Nigerian playwright. The trend departs radically from the Popular Theatre Tradition. Obafemi (2001) summarizes it as “a move from a celebratory communally- oriented, robust Theatre to self-conscious, individualist and metaphysical dramatic theatre creations”. This is known as Literary Drama, largely university-based and elitists. Henshaw wrote many plays, including This is Our Chance, Children of the Goddess, Medicine for Love and Dinner for Promotion. His Plays and those of his contemporaries address social, cultural and political issues in Nigeria. These kinds of play became popular with students and literate people all over the country. The leading Literary Drama icon of this period is the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, who early in his career established a Theatre Company known as “The 1960 Masks”. He produced and published many plays, including The Lion and the Jewel (1959), The Trials of Brother Jero, A Dance of the Forests (1960), Kongi’s Harvest (1964), Madmen and Specialists (1970), Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), A Play of Giants (1984), The Road and The Strong Breed. Thematically, Soyinka has two types of plays, namely Political Plays and Social/Metaphysical plays. In his Political Plays, he castigates the primitive nature of governance in contemporary Africa, while his Social/Metaphysical plays explore issues such as the nature of sacrifices, the mysterious supernatural forces, which control the universe, passing from life to death, prejudices, religious hypocrisy and conflicts. Obafemi (2001) observes: Soyinka is preoccupied in his creative work, especially his plays, with the 16 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

socio-political and spiritual state of Africa. He sees African society in a state of transition, both on the material and the spiritual levels. He approaches this concern with the inextricable socio- spiritual search for liberation through the medium of ritual. Another notable playwright of this era is John Pepper Clark. Clark has published plays like Songs of a Goat, The Masquerade, The Raft, Ozidi, The Boat, The Return Home, Full Circle and The Wives ‘Revolt. The ljaw Delta environment, being Clark’s homeland, influenced him greatly in setting his plays. Therefore, his settings are of storm and tide, boat capsizes, drowning and sand bars. “Clark has consistently been faithful to and drawn upon his Ijo background for inspiration both stylistically as well as thematically”. The list of the literary dramatists includes Ola Rotimi. Being one of the playwrights under review in this study, he is discussed in the next few pages. Obafemi asserts, Ola Rotimi and Wale Ogunyemi are perhaps the closest dramatists in English to the traditional performing arts in Nigeria both in terms of the use of oral tradition and history. They are both concerned, primarily, with reaching the Nigerian audience at whatever levels of competence in the English language in which they operate. This assertion is clearly vindicated in Wale Ogunyemi’s ljaiye War (1970) and Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi. Both plays come from the same historical sources with a little difference in the approach of the playwrights. Ogunyemi (1939-2001) first wrote in Yoruba, which is why he was regarded as the most indigenous of all the Nigerian Literary Dramatists writing in English. Ogunyemi has published many other plays including, Eshu Elegbara (1970), The Sign of the Rainbow and Eniyan (1987), Kirji (1975), Business Headache (1966), Be Mighty, Be Mine (1968) and The Divorce (1977). The major concern of his plays is the quest for national unity. Next on the list is Zulu Sofola (1935-1995), who is widely acknowledged as the first Nigerian female playwright. Sofola published The Disturbed Peace of Christmas (1971), Wedlock of the Gods (1972), King Emene (1974), The Wizard of Law (1975), The Sweet Trap (1977), Old Wines Are Tasty (1981) and Memories in the Moonlight (1986). Obafemi (2001) summarises her vision as: ...being a vision grounded more on her abiding conviction of the inviolability of cultural and traditional paradigms: myths, rituals and mores. She expounds the resultant tragic consequences that await defiers and rebels of traditional systems, codes and ethics, either through kinship, marital or social obligations (p. 159). This vision puts many feminist critics in a difficult position regarding her works as examples of feminist writing. Hence, they define her as a writer who celebrates African culture. However, some critics argue, “women are...poorly projected in (her) play, their education taken as unnecessary at critical points while men are favorably drawn”. In the 1970s and 80s, a new group of playwrights rose to fame. The playwrights, according to Obafemi (2001), being tired of Soyinka’s socio-spiritual search for liberation through the medium of ritual , advocated social revolution as the only way out of the country’s present social incoherence. Obafemi (2001) describes their work as one that ... deals, urgently, with contemporary social problems in Nigeria with the aim of raising awareness of a positive revolutionary alternative to the present decadence. (They) employ the revolutionary potential of the theatrical medium to make 17 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

firm political statements and their individual successes and limitations in creating art that is not just sheer propaganda: art that is both ‘politically correct and artistically powerful’. Among these writers are Fela Davis, Comish Ekiye, Soji Simpson, Kole Omotoso, Bode Sowande, Meki Nzewi, Laolu Ogunniyi, Bode Osanyin, Zulu Sofola, Ahmed Yerima, Femi Osofisan, Tunde Fatunde, Olu Obafemi and Sam Ukala (Ogunbiyi, 1981). Of these new playwrights, “Osofisan is the most articulate and the most ambitious in his use of the subversive potential of the theatre to shape the audience’s perceptive awareness of the social revolution which they find inevitable in the country” (Obafemi, 2001, p.174). Osofisan has published about three dozen plays, the most important of which are The Chattering and the Song (1977), Who is Afraid of Solarin(1978), Once Upon Four Robbers (1980) and Morountodun (1982). 1.12 SUMMARY  Dramatists’ works are often reactions to certain socio-political ills of their time.  Theatre could be used to educate, celebrate, protest and make discovery.  It is a product of social life.  The dramatists select material for their creative output from happenings in real life or history. History and Theatre can both be means through which we gain significant insights into human experience.  Theatre is used for different purposes.  There are different forms of it.  The forms include Conventional and Non- conventional theatre.  Conventional Theatre involves tragedy and other tragic forms and Comedy and other Comic forms.  These were theorized by Aristotle, the first theatre theorist.  Having been identified with better use of theatricals, thespians or dramaturgicals, they are regarded as conventional.  The non- conventional theatre subsumes modern theatres, such as Brecht’s revolutionary Epic Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, The Avant- garde Theatre, Neo- rationalist Theatre, and Postcolonial Theatre.  These are regarded by critics generally as non-conventional because they are characterized by an unorthodox use of theatricals.  They are theatres that jolt their audience and by so doing stir them to action. 1.13 KEYWORDS  Theatre -auditorium  Separatist - nationalist 18 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Troupe -company  Incantation - chant  Ceremonial - ritual  Mythical - legendary  Evolutionary -progression  Rituals - ceremony  enlightenment- illumination  prototype- archetype 1.14 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Analyze Music and Social Dynamics in Nigeria literature ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 2. Examine changes in the Nigerian theatre ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 3. Interpret church and the emergence of Nigerian theatre ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 1.15 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. What was the origin of the text and music of Nigerian theatre? 2. Who started theatre in Nigeria? 3. When did modern drama started in Nigeria? 4. Who is the father of drama in Nigeria? 5. How many Theatres are there in Nigeria? Long Questions 19 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

1. Define the origin of Nigerian Theatre. 2. Identify the aspects involved in Nigerian Theatre. 3. Elaborate the different perspectives in Nigerian Theatre. 4. Explain how Theatre is the building and drama is the doing. 5. Explore the understanding of certain mythical phenomena in Nigerian Theatre. B.Multiple Choice Questions 1.Nigerian theatre deals with _____ types of themes a. three b. four c. two d. five 2. Nigerian theatre, variety of folk opera of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria that emerged in the early _____ a. 1940s b. 1950s c. 1960s d. 1970s 3.In _____ Ogunde was the first to establish a professional touring company a. 1945 b. 1946 c. 1947 d. 1944 4.In _____ Ogunmola organized some of his pupils into an acting troupe, forming his own Theatre Party a. 1947 b. 1945 c. 1946 d. 1949 20 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5.Ogunmola’s operas reveal a _____ influence in the use of biblical material for the basic plots. a. Christian b. Muslim c. Hindu d. Buddhist Answers 1-a, 2-a, 3-a, 4-a, 5-a 1.16 REFERENCES Reference books  Awodiya, Muyiwa P. The Drama of Femi Osofisan: A Critical Perspective. Ibadan: Kraft Books Limited, 2010  Clark, J.P. “Aspects of Nigerian Drama” Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Critical Source Book. ed. Yemi Ogunbiyi. Lagos: Tanus Books Limited, 2014  Nnolim, Charles. Issues In African Literature. Yenagoa: Treasure Resource Communications Limited, 2009  Ogunbiyi, Yemi. “Nigerian Theatre and Drama: A Critical Profile”. Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Critical Source Book. ed. Yemi Ogunbiyi. Lagos: Tanus Books Limited, 2014 Textbook reference  Yerima, Ahmed. Modern Nigerian Theatre: The Geoffrey Axworthy Years, 1956- 1967. Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2005 Website  https://credencepressltd.com/journal/uploads/archive/202116138844286376164711.p df  https://www.jstor.org/stable/3818202  https://www.peterlang.com/view/9781433136825/xhtml/chapter22.xhtml  https://www.britannica.com/art/Nigerian-theatre 21 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 2 NIGERIA: WOLE SOYINKA: DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN STRUCTURE 2.0 Learning Objectives 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Wole Soyinka 2.3 Yoruba Culture 2.4 Characters 2.5 Death and the King’s Horseman Analysis 2.6 Themes 2.7 Study of Death and the King’s Horseman 2.8 Important Quotation 2.9 Summary 2.10 Keywords 2.11 Learning Activities 2.12 Unit End Questions 2.13 References 2.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Identify the works of Wole Soyinka  Examine the play in detail  Analyse the themes of the play 2.1 INTRODUCTION Nigerian theatre, variety of folk opera of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria that emerged in the early 1940s. It combined a brilliant sense of mime, colorful costumes, and traditional drumming, music, and folklore. Directed toward a local audience, it uses Nigerian themes, ranging from modern-day satire to historical tragedy. Although the plays are performed entirely in the Yoruba language, they may be understood and appreciated by speakers of other languages with the aid of a translated synopsis Nigerian theatre deals with three types of themes: the fantastic folktale, the farcical social satire, and the historical or mythological account derived from oral tradition. Generally 22 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

speaking, both text and music evolved from a synthesis of liturgies from different religious sects. Although there are more than a dozen traveling theatre companies, three professional troupes are particularly notable: those of Hubert Ogunde (author of Yoruba ronu [“Yorubas, Think!”] and Journey to Heaven); Kola Ogunmola (The Palmwine Drinkard and Love of Money); and Duro Ladipo (Oba koso [“The King Did Not Hang”] and Eda [“Everyman”]). Each of these troupes has created a distinctive style shaped by the tastes of its founder, who generally writes or adapts and produces the plays, arranges the music, and performs the leading roles. This contemporary dramatic form grew out of biblical episodes in Christmas and Passion plays presented by separatist African churches in the 1930s and ‘40s. Some of these plays have been performed abroad, notably, Oba koso and The Palmwine Drinkard. In 1945 Ogunde was the first to establish a professional touring company. Some of his plays are satires on Yoruba types: the jealous husband, the stingy father, the reckless son. Others deal with topical events in Nigerian politics. In 1947 Ogunmola organized some of his pupils into an acting troupe, forming his own Theatre Party. Ogunmola’s operas reveal a Christian influence in the use of biblical material for the basic plots. Ogunmola employs folklore by incorporating praise poetry, proverbs, and incantations into the dialogue, as evidenced in his celebrated production of Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard. In the early 1960s Ladipo, a composer of church music who wished to preserve the traditional arts, wrote cultural plays based on historical material. While he was no doubt influenced by his predecessors, Ladipo employed ceremonial drumming, chanting, and singing as well as traditional costume appropriate to specific historical or religious groups represented in his productions. Some of Ladipo’s actors had performed in religious rituals before joining the theatre company; thus, their ceremonial material was incorporated within a contemporary mold. 2.2 WOLE SOYINKA Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, “The 1960 Masks” and in 1964, the “Orisun Theatre Company”, in which he has 23 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

produced his own plays and taken part as actor. He has periodically been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale. During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words. As dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by, among others, the Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music, and action. He bases his writing on the mythology of his own tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun, the god of iron and war, at the centre. He wrote his first plays during his time in London, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel (a light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959 and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are The Trial of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with its sequel, Jero’s Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ. 1973), A Dance of the Forests (performed 1960, publ.1963), Kongi’s Harvest (performed 1965, publ. 1967) and Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970, publ. 1971). Among Soyinka’s serious philosophic plays are (apart from “The Swamp Dwellers”) The Strong Breed (performed 1966, publ. 1963), The Road ( 1965) and Death and the King’s Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). In The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the African stage and in Opera Wonyosi (performed 1977, publ. 1981), bases himself on John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka’s latest dramatic works are A Play of Giants (1984) and Requiem for a Futurologist (1985). Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to Joyce’s and Faulkner’s, in which six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African experiences, and Season of Anomy (1973) which is based on the writer’s thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba. Purely autobiographical are The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and the account of his childhood, Aké ( 1981), in which the parents’ warmth and interest in their son are prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World (1975). Soyinka’s poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are collected in Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1988). Soyinka is also politically motivated. During the Nigerian Civil War, he appealed for a ceasefire, but was accused of conspiring with the Biafran rebels. He was held for 27 months, 22 of them in solitary confinement, until being released as a result of international pressure in 24 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

1969. While in prison he produced a poetry collection titled ‘Poems from Prison’, and also recounted his experiences in the book ‘The Man Died: Prison Notes’ (1972). He has remained a critic of many Nigerian and other brutal and/or corrupt administrations, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. In 2005, he became one of the leaders of an alternative National conference – PRONACO. He was forced to flee Nigeria during the rule of General Sani Abacha (1993–98) and lived mainly in the US as a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1999, however, he accepted an emeritus position at Ife. Soyinka’s memoirs, ‘You Must Set Forth at Dawn’, were published in 2005, and a new collection of essays “Of Africa” in 2013. Soyinka remains politically active and stands up against both secular and theocratic dictatorships and their accompanying violence and abuses of Human Rights. Despite once founding a political party - the Democratic Front for a People’s Federation – he has refused to stand for political office and prefers to be seen as a literary figure, who looks deeply into society and the human psyche. Among other recognitions, Soyinka has received the 2014 International Humanist Award, and the International Poetry Award, Trieste, in 2013. Wole Soyinka is married to Adefolake Wole-Soyinka, with whom he has three children. Soyinka’s attempt at other genres of fiction expands on the themes expressed in his plays, thus becoming the narratives of personal and political turmoil in Africa. 37 This is true about his novels The Interpreters, and Season of Anomy, while his nonfiction works and essay collections are based on his own life and personal political convictions. He has also composed a trilogy that reflects on his life and the life of his family – Aké: The Years of Childhood, Ìsarà: A Voyage around Essay and Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: A Memoir. His first collection of essays Myth, Literature, and the African World is a combination of his criticism of specific texts and his own search for a literary perspective. To this enquiry, Soyinka adds the role that politics and literature play in modern Africa in his next essay collection Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture. His other collections of essays include The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis, The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness and The Climate of Fear. Soyinka has also published several collections of poetry, including Idanre and Other Poems, Ogun Abibiman, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known. As in his plays and novels, Soyinka uses liberally words, images and idioms from the Yoruba terminology in his poems too. He returns to stories associated with the Yoruba mythological figures like Ogun, Atunda, Sango, and Oya in his earlier poems, while his politics is more explicit in newer poems where he deals with themes like the Apartheid movement in South Africa and his reflections on modern politics, his exile from Nigeria. Even though the disruption of African history caused by the 25 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

imperial powers created a lot of political, economic and cultural problems, the native performance traditions remained unharmed. It even flourished at the community level such as in the celebration of seasonal rituals and in folk theatre. The African writers, like any other dramatists of the colonial or subordinated culture, tried to recuperate or 38 reinterpret their own histories. In Africa, the inherited Western dramaturgical and performance models have been quite often fused with their own traditions taken from ritual and popular theatre. Soyinka made prolific use of such fusions to produce great intellectual and aesthetic effect. His formal education at Nigeria and England made him familiar with both cultures and he was generally influenced by both his native African and Euro-American theatres. At the same time, he was aware of the West’s disruptive effect upon the African continent, especially on his own country. The theme about which Soyinka spoke and wrote eloquently was on the different manifestations of the desire for power. According to him, power proved a durable and autonomous partner in the transformation of history, cutting across the imperatives of race, creed, class and ideology. “The function of literature is to contain and control this ‘anti- humanistic malformations’, which are produced by the will to power” (Crow and Banfield 86). He saw colonialism as the omnivorous, deforming will to power on the African continent. In his early plays the exercise of power was associated with the embodiments or representatives of their communities and their orthodox wisdom, who were challenged by youthful rebels. In The Bacchae of Euripides, Pentheus is the representative authority in its secular essence. Dionysos, on the other hand, is the representative of unwritten laws – a non-secular essence. This play, in a way, marked Soyinka’s efforts to blend the Western logic of conflict between the opposites to the African notion of coexistence. In African cosmology, two opposites are supposed to operate in balance. In Soyinka’s play, the two men are not in balance, they confront each other. They belong to diametrically opposite worlds – that of release and oppression, that of submission to power and control to rule. In his play, Dionysos represents the hyper reality that remains above the obvious reality, which is represented by Pentheus. 39 In Death and the King’s Horseman, Soyinka is more direct in dealing with the politics of conflict, as he juxtaposed the different sensibilities that existed within the colony. Here, Pilkings, the British colonial officer could not imbibe the spirit of the ritual taken out by Elesin Oba, the King’s horseman who is preparing to sacrifice himself for the welfare of the community. The former intervened to stop Oba’s dance to the other world, by incarcerating him. But his son, Olunde whom Pilkings had sent to England for higher education, goes ahead with the ritual and dies. By using these confrontations between logic and belief, Soyinka is highlighting the metaphysical level of colonial power’s intervention into the indigene culture. “Crucial as Pilking’s intervention is, it is not what most concerns Soyinka. What does, is the capacity of colonialism to undermine psychologically those charged with ensuring the well-being and continuity of the culture” (Crow and Banfield 84). In The Road, perhaps the most enigmatic plays of Soyinka, the interruption of the ritual seems to be due to mere chance. Kotonu, having 26 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

escaped death at the rotten bridge by a miracle, drove his mammy wagon into the driver’s festival in honor of the God Ogun and knocked down Murano as the latter was dancing possessed. “Many if not all these forces, which in some way prevent or impair ritual potency, may be grouped together as manifestations of the desire for power” (Crow and Banfield 86). Through his plays, Soyinka reflects the dichotomy of race, which was the cornerstone in justifying a colonial regime. The rebellion against the racial excellence of the ruler was always there in the psychology of the colonised, though various strata of the society responded variously to it. Soyinka’s plays punctured this myth or irrational nobility. Soyinka’s assertion of the traditional African religion springs from a deep respect for the Yoruba culture and a strong belief “that its world view offers a valid and adequate ground of metaphysical location for the Yoruba subject” (Msiska 5). 40 Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and the road whom Soyinka considers as his guiding deity is a constant presence in Soyinka’s works. His concept of art and drama is based on Ogun’s journey across “the chthonic realm” to unite the gods and men. “Ogun’s character and journey function as both metaphorical and metonymic of the structure of human experience and subjectivity” (Msiska 21). The binary nature of Ogun as a deity, which stands for both emancipation and destruction, suits the postcolonial condition of hybridity so well that Soyinka could easily adapt this mythical presence of Ogun to the realm of contemporary realities. Ogun also exhibits the unique moral courage to cross the ‘transitional abyss’ between divinity and human beings and reach out to the latter. Soyinka’s characters, be it Olunde or Eman or Demoke, are moulded with obvious shades of Ogunian characteristics. Soyinka’s unique ability to look at things from an unexpected point of view brings in a new perspective to the conventional and the familiar. Msiska aptly sums up his qualities as “...quintessentially a poetics of defamiliarization, employing satire and tragic comedy as well as tragedy itself as discursive sites from which to engender a renewed awareness of the nature of the post-colonial reality in its full historical and continuing encounter with other cultures, particularly and significantly those of the West” (Msiska 84). Both Karnad and Soyinka approached the colony from different points. While Karnad focussed more on the impact of the colonial rule on an individual, Soyinka took his theatre to the streets. Except in Tughlaq and The Dreams of Tipu Sultan, where the theme is overtly political, Karnad worked in detail about the subjective responses to the imposition of control on natural instincts – be it on artistic expression as in The Fire and the Rain, on sexuality as in Naga-Mandala or Hayavadana. On the other hand, Soyinka worked on the controls imposed on the society as a single unit. 41 However, both the playwrights remained connected by the common element that they were firmly rooted in the history of their respective lands and could communicate to an international audience by raising their art to the realm of universal understanding. More importantly, by doing so, both Karnad and Soyinka could establish their works as beacons of the postcolonial aesthetics. Another trait of commonality between Soyinka and Karnad is that they place the action of their plays not as realms of conflict between the coloniser and the colonised. They 27 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

remain closer to the politics of postcolonialism posited by Homi K. Bhabha when he said: As a mode of analysis, it attempts to revise those nationalist or ‘nativist’ pedagogies that set up the relation of Third World and First World in a binary structure of opposition. The postcolonial perspective resists the attempt at holistic forms of social explanation. It forces a recognition of more complex cultural and political boundaries that exist on the cusp of these often opposed political spheres. (248) Both Soyinka and Karnad portray characters, who are exposed to the coloniser’s culture, as better equipped to handle the present situation rather than those who often blindly adhere to their own traditions. At the same time, their engagement with their respective traditions and myths in theatre arises not out of fascination or a uni-directional motive to return to the roots. Tradition and myth are potent tools for these playwrights for subverting the colonial past and they do it in the postcolonial spirit of appropriation, as they adapt or even distort the myths to suit their purpose. Plays of Soyinka and Karnad hold on to these myriad aspects of post coloniality as they reflect different facets of human behaviour and capture the ethnic symbols, firmly rooted in native traditions, through their characters. 2.3 YORUBA CULTURE The Yoruba are a large African ethnic group that is made up of a collection of diverse people brought together by a common language, history, and culture. They have many rituals and ceremonies, such as the egungun ceremony and accompanying dress mentioned in the play. A video of the garb and the dance can be seen here. In 1893, the kingdoms of the Yoruba in Nigeria were added to the Protectorate of Great Britain. Nigeria was a British colony up until 1960, and then on October 1st Nigeria gained its independence structured as a federation of states. 2.4 CHARACTERS Elesin Oba Elesin Oba, known as a man of great vitality, was the chief horseman of the dead king, he lived a life of luxury, but knows that now that the king has been dead for a month, he is expected to commit ritual suicide. We see him on his last day on earth demand a woman who is already engaged and takes her to bed, although being warned. He is prevented from committing the ritual act, for which his son Olunde commits suicide in Elesin’s place, and upon seeing his dead son’s body strangles himself with his chains. Amusa Amusa is an African serving the native administration police. He is not trusted by the British officer Simon Pilkings and is also not trusted by the villagers for working with the British. 28 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Although converted to Christianity, he still has much respect for his native beliefs. He rebukes Simon for dishonoring his native culture but follows orders to prevent Elesin’s suicide. Iyoloja Iyoloja is the spokesperson of the women in the village and serves as a voice of wisdom. Although she warns against Elesin taking the bride in order to preserve his duty, she hands her over knowing it is Elesins last day on this earth. She is worried that he will leave behind a cursed pregnancy and reminds him of this when bringing Olunde to Elesin in his cell and tells the bride to think of the unborn. Simon Pilkings Simon Pilkings is the British district officer in the play. He has disdain for the Yoruba and the Yoruba culture. He is very sure of his way of life and dismisses things he does not understand. He arrests Elesin on the night the prince is there, not to save Elesin, but to prevent trouble on the night of the ball. By trying to preserve peace, he actually causes much more trouble. Olunde Elesin’s son, who returns to the village and sees that his father has not completed the sacred ritual which he was bound to by honor. Olunde is disgusted and tells Elesin that he is no son of his. Olunde then takes his own life in his father’s place, which consequently leads to Elesin committing suicide himself. 2.6 DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN ANALYSIS Death and the King's Horseman is a play by Wole Soyinka based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria during the colonial era: the horseman of a Yoruba King was prevented from committing ritual suicide by the colonial authorities. In addition to the intervention of the colonial authorities, Soyinka calls the horseman's own conviction toward suicide into question, posing a problem that throws off the community's balance. Soyinka wrote the play in Cambridge, where he was a fellow at Churchill College during his political exile from Nigeria. He has also written a preface to the play, explaining what he sees as the greatest misconceptions in understanding it. In particular, he says that the play should not be considered as \"clash of cultures.\" Rather, the play demonstrates the need for interaction between African and European cultures, as per Soyinka's post-Biafran cultural philosophy. Death and the King's Horseman builds upon the true story on which Soyinka based the play, to focus on the character of Elesin, the King's Horseman of the title. According to some Yoruba traditions, the death of the king must be followed by the ritual suicide of the king's horseman as well as the king's dog and horse, because the horseman's spirit is essential to helping the 29 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King's spirit ascend to the afterlife. Otherwise, the king's spirit will wander the earth and bring harm to his people. The first half of the play documents the process of this ritual, with the potent, life-loving figure Elesin living out his final day in celebration before the ritual process begins. At the last minute, the local colonial administrator, Simon Pilkings, intervenes, the suicide being viewed as illegal and unnecessary by the colonial authorities. In the play, the result for the community is catastrophic, as the breaking of the ritual means the disruption of the cosmic order of the universe and thus the well-being and future of the collectivity is in doubt. The community blames Elesin as much as Pilkings, accusing him of being too attached to the earth to fulfil his spiritual obligations. Events lead to tragedy when Elesin's son, Olunde, who has returned to Nigeria from studying medicine in Europe, takes on the responsibility of his father and commits ritual suicide in his place so as to restore the honour of his family and the order of the universe. Consequently, Elesin kills himself, condemning his soul to a degraded existence in the next world. In addition, the dialogue of the native suggests that this may have been insufficient and that the world is now \"adrift in the void\". Act I “Death and the King’s Horseman” begins with Elesin Oba walking through a market at the end of the business day. He is followed by praise-singers and talks to the praise singer Olohun-iyo about the importance of this day, as he is enjoying his last day on earth. He is flirted with by many women but catches sight of a women who is already engaged. He demands to take her to bed, as Iyaloja warns him not to forget his duty. Act II Act II takes place over the same evening as Act I, at the house of Simon Pilkings, who is a British officer. As he dances with his wife, Amusa, who is working for the British, is insulted that Simon and his wife are wearing traditional egungun ceremonial clothes and will not speak to them until they take them off. Amusa explains that Elesin will be committing ritual suicide that night. As the prince will be arriving, Simon orders Elesin to be arrested so he cannot complete the ritual because he does not want any trouble. Act III In Act III we return to the market of Act I. One of the market stalls has been converted into a wedding chamber. As two British constables arrive to arrest Elesin, the women hurl insults at them and send them away. Elesin shows Iyaloja the cloth that proves the bride was a virgin. As he readies to die, he hears the drumming and knows it is almost his turn. He falls into a hypnotic state and dances. Act IV 30 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Act IV begins with the prince showing up for the ball, admires the Pilking’s egungun attire, and begins to dance. Simon informs a resident officer of the ritual Elesin is about to undergo, and they agree to try and stop it and Simon hurries to the marketplace. Elesin’s son Olunde rebukes Jane for the egungun attire and knows the ritual his father is about to undergo and goes to find Simon to stop him from interfering. Elesin is interfered with, accuses the British for bringing him shame, and when Olunde sees him, he claims he has no father and walks away. Act V Act V takes place in Elesin’s prison cell. He tells Simon that because he was not allowed to complete his ritual there will never be peace in the world again. Iyoloja comes to Elesin and tells him that it is not the fault of the British, but of his own for being distracted by the bride. She brings him the body of Olunde and shows him that he killed himself in his father’s place. Upon seeing his son’s corpse, Elesin strangles himself with his own chains. The bride does her duty and is informed by Iyoloja that she should forget the dead and the living and think of the unborn 2.6 THEMES Circle of Life The Yoruba believe that life follows along a continuum, the dead are not forgotten as ancestors are honored. The unborn are also cherished, as we see Iyoloja point out that we should give our thoughts to the unborn. The most important transition one makes in the culture is the transition from life into death. This is clearly seen as Elesin makes his way through the market before his ritual suicide, which will remind the village about life being on a continuum. They think of death in a completely traditional and ritual manner. Clashing Cultures The two cultures, the British and the Yoruba, are clearly at odds thoughout the play. We see simple non-confrontational clashing, such as the Pilkings listen to tango as the ritual drumming of the Yoruba is heard outside. During the night of Elesin’s ritual suicide the British are holding a fancy dress up ball with the prince in attendance, these examples are to show the stark difference in what each culture values, but we then see disrespect. The Pilkings do not understand, and do not care to understand, the Yoruba culture and practices. We see the first blatant disrespect as they are wearing sacred egungun dress to their fancy ball. Amusa and Olunde point out the disrespect, but they ignore it. In view of religion, Elesin believes truly in his faith, while Simon shows he does not have much respect for his Christianity. Duty 31 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Duty is a major theme throughout the play. As the King’s chief horseman, Elesin knows that he will follow his king into death and considers himself a man of great honor. He even claims that he is eagerly awaiting his death and will not be distracted. This holds to be not true, as he is tempted by the bride and tries to become more attached to the world he is about to depart. As he is distracted, this gives Simon an opportunity to prevent Elesin from conducting his ritual suicide. Elesin, as an honorable man, should not have been prevented from committing his sacred rite and duty. Olunde, Elesin’s son, is so ashamed of his father that he refutes their relationship and gives his own life in return. Temptation and its Repercussions When Elesin is being paraded through the market the afternoon before his ritual suicide, he spies an engaged woman whom he lusts after. He takes her to bed, despite Iyoloja’s warning not to be distracted from his duty. It is this physical temptation that Iyoloja claims was the reason Elesin was unable to complete his sacred rite. The fallout from this was Elesin’s son Olunde committing suicide, with Elesin following suit. The physical temptation of a woman and the ensuing distraction from duty is a theme seen in many plays. Suicide The story is structured around a ritual suicide to begin with, which sets the tone and foreshadows future events. We have a Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet-like ending to the play, with Olunde committing suicide due to his father’s lack of duty to his rite. When he learns of his son’s actions, Elesin strangles himself with chains. It is a very Shakespeare-esque ending to the story, and reminiscent of the tragic endings often seen. Sacrifice Sacrifice is a central component of the ritual. Only through Elesin sacrificing himself can the ritual be completed. Of course, Elesin cannot complete this successfully, due to both external and internal circumstances. It is Olunde who makes the ultimate sacrifice by taking his own life so he can fulfill the Yoruba ritual. This foreshadowed in the conversation regarding self- sacrifice between Olunde and Jane, who have very different ideas about the nature of this act. Jane finds the captain’s sacrifice distasteful, but Olunde views it as a life-affirming and heroic act. Ritual The central ritual of the text the king’s horseman dying so he can join his master in the afterlife is a fascinating component of Yoruba society, but also functions here as a dying country’s last gasp in the face of colonial control and oppression. The ritual is important to the Nigerians in all times and places, but there is special import here in that its success or failure seems to say a lot about the status of resistance to the colonizers. When Elesin is prevented from carrying it 32 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

out, their world seems pushed off its axis; their traditions and beliefs are deeply wounded. The colonizers, to put it simply, have won. Even though Olunde completes the ritual for his father, there is a sense that there is no going back; this culture’s way of life is effectively over. Colonialism European imperialism/colonialism is ever-present in the text, lurking heavily in the background of all the events. The English presence in Nigeria is by now well established but is still rife with instability and conflict. The central events of the text are meant to symbolize the larger conflict: Nigerians do not welcome this foreign regime and prefer to conduct their own affairs, no matter how odd and “uncivilized” they seem to the English, but the English believe their role there is positive and necessary, for while they are not only growing rich from their colonial empire, but they are also supposedly bringing light and progress to the benighted people of Nigeria. Duty Elesin and Pilkings represent two differing views on duty, which they both claim to prize highly. Elesin’s duty is to perform the sacred ritual that he was meant to. It means dying for his people and dying in the appropriate fashion. Pilkings’s duty is to enforce the laws of the English colonial empire in Africa, which means not allowing the supposedly “barbaric” customs like the king’s horseman ritual to continue. He believes he is doing something positive by preventing this ritual; he is saving Elesin’s life as well as not allowing the colony to remain uncivilized. Unfortunately, the duties of both men conflict mightily with each other, and this conflict leads to the tragedies of the last act of the play. Music, Dance and Poetry Music, dance, and poetry are featured throughout the text. For the Nigerians, they are fundamentally important parts of the ritual. They can tell stories, induce trances and meditation and reverie, bring about transformation and change, and overall, demonstrate great power and importance. The ritual needs these elements to survive. The Europeans also have music and dance, but they do not possess the same influence. The music is restrained, the dancing stilted. The European dance/music is also sullying through its existence in Nigeria, where it does not belong. It is alien, just as the Pilkings’s wearing the egungun costumes is an alien act. Life and Death Life and death, and the relationship between the two, permeate the text. The entire ritual is concerned with the passage from one state into anther, and Elesin’s great failure is that he cannot properly make that journey. For those of the Yoruba ritual, death is merely another state in which one can exist, and are cycles interwoven with each other. The Europeans are also 33 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

concerned with life and death, but their perspective on it is different: life is sacred, death is frightening and has no greater significance other than it must come eventually -- but through God’s timing, not man’s. Gender Although it does not play as major a role as the other themes, gender nevertheless is an important component of the text. Soyinka has several things to say about gender. On the one hand, the women and girls of the marketplace, particularly Iyaloja, seem to have a great deal of power: their voices are loud and forceful. However, the Bride is completely mute and is more or less an object that is given to Elesin to appease him. She is a cipher who demonstrates how little power Nigerian women can possess. Jane, on the other hand, who represents European women, may seem to have a bit more power than her Nigerian counterparts, as she is able to talk freely with her husband about their various affairs and role in the colony. She does not hesitate to offer her opinion; however, Pilkings’s responses to such utterances are telling. He often puts her down and yells at her, revealing his misogyny. Jane may be loud, as Elesin notes, but that is where her voice stops. 2.7 STUDY - DEATH AND THE KING'S HORSE MAN Elesin and his drummers and praise-singers enter the market. The vendors are packing up their stalls and getting ready to go home. The praise-singer asks Elesin why he moves with such haste and asks him if since he is going to meet his bride, if he has forgotten the mother of his children. Elesin laughs and says he must see his women because he has neglected them. The praise-singer wonders if there will be anyone like himself on the other side. Elesin urges him to remain at his side while they are in this world. The praise-singer calls out that Elesin’s name will “be like the sweet berry” and the “world will never spit it out” (10). Elesin tells him to come along to visit his women, and that he looks forward to smelling them and feeling them. The praise-singer sings of the time when white slavers came and took the best of their race –the “mind and muscle of tour race” (10). Despite this, he sings, “our world was never wrenched from its true course” (10). Elesin says the world will not leave its course during his time. Elesin begins to speak of the “Not-I bird”. First, he starts to dance, and the drummer plays along. He chants the story in an easy, amiable manner. While he speaks the women, including Iyaloja, arrive. In Elesin’s story death comes calling, and the farmer, the hunter, the courtesan, and others say “Not I” when death seeks them. The refrain is even heard among the beasts of the forest, and among the gods themselves. But when that same Not-I bird comes to Elesin, he is not afraid and rolls out his welcome mat. The bird flies away and will not be heard 34 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

in his lifetime. Elesin concludes, “My rein is loosened. I am master of my Fate”. He will not turn aside or delay. The women ask if anything will hold him back and he says no, that he goes to keep his friend and master company. They did great things together, but now, as Elesin explains, “Life has an end. A life that will outlive fame and friendship begs another name”. Because life is honor, it ends when honor does. When the women say they know him for a man of honor, Elesin suddenly gets angry. The women whisper and ask why he is offended. Iyaloja, the mother of the marketplace, asks what they did wrong. Elesin asks them if his body looks like a vagrant’s. Iyaloja replies that she is confused. The praise-singer steps in and warns him gently that when the child is remorseful, the strictest father relents. Elesin points to his ungainly clothes and laughs, and the women realize he was joking and needs his rich attire. Iyaloja dances around him, pleased that he forgave them. He is attired in elegant clothing while the women sing about meeting him in the great market. Elesin, dressed in finery, states that the world is good, and the women tell him they know he will leave it as such. He knows he will follow the umbilical cord of the world to its origin and will find his roots. He glimpses a beautiful girl and stops to ask if he is still in the market he knows and loves. Confused, the praise-singer tells him of course he is, and that it is still his voice, not that of some acolyte in heaven. Elesin continues to muse, saying his whole life he has always had whatever he wanted, especially with women. The praise-singer replies that no one doubts his reputation. Elesin turns to Iyaloja and asks about the woman he saw, waxing poetic on her beauty. Iyaloja replies that she is betrothed. Elesin is annoyed and wonders why she said that. Quickly, the woman says she did not mean to offend him. She just does not see the need to ruin another’s happiness. The women ask what is going on and realize that the man the girl is betrothed to is her own son. She decides not to make things difficult for Elesin as he travels to the next world, however, and turns back to him to tell him he will not be burdened as he journeys on. She tells him it is good that “your last strength be ploughed back into the womb that gave you being”. Elesin is pleased, chiding her that her eyes were clouded at first. She agrees but says the fruit of this union will be of both worlds. She then warns him to make sure he goes through with his sacrifice, and he is a bit piqued. She prepares to leave to get his bridal chamber ready and adds that “these same hands will lay your shrouds”, to which Elesin asks, annoyed, if she has to be so blunt. 35 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The bride is led in and kneels before Elesin. Act I of the play is justly celebrated but is often confusing for readers if they have no prior knowledge of the text or Yoruba religious and social rituals. The ritualistic language and referents are complex, with the praise-singer and Elesin’s exchanges offering particular stumbling blocks for comprehension. Nevertheless, the basic outline of the plot becomes clear –the King has died, and Elesin, a local chief and the horseman of the King, is supposed to die after him to join him in the afterlife. He does not just kill himself right away, however (in fact, as the young houseboy Joseph puts it, he is just supposed to die), but along the way also passes through engagements with the local women in the marketplace, expressions of his own lack of fear and his willingness to keep the world on course by fulfilling his duty, and song and dance with the praise-singer. As scholar Jasbir Jain explains, even among a play “suffused by the purely dramatic: ritual, song, storytelling, masque, mimicry, and dance” and full of spectacle and color, “the first act is wholly ritualistic.” There is ritual not only in Elesin’s preparation to join the King, but also in his rather sudden choice to add marriage and consummation to his pre-death activities. This marriage, this union of life, is a metaphor for Elesin achieving union with the King in the afterlife. As Jain comments, “Death and life have established a cyclical unity, and the physical union with the new bride is only a prelude to the union of life with death which is referred to as the brand new bride.” The fact that all of this comes together in the marketplace, a metaphor for life and the afterlife, is significant. Elesin came to bid farewell to the women, proclaiming, “This market is my roost. When I come among the women, I am a chicken with a hundred mothers” (10). The marketplace is full of life and vitality, just like the powerful, zesty, and sensuous Elesin. Elesin exhibits a great deal of confidence and pride, and the reader/audience is left marveling at the man’s power and ability to welcome his own death. The entire story of the “Not-I” bird serves as a reminder that while most human beings are afraid of death, Elesin welcomes it. He proclaims, “My rein is loosened. I am master of my fate”. While, as Jain notes, “the picture that emerges at the end of the first act is not one of fear, but one of strength and harmony,” there is still a bit of subtle foreshadowing that indicates all may not pan out as the players anticipate. Elesin’s apparent acceptance of his imminent death is somewhat belied by his zeal for life. He seems just a little too happy to be surrounded by admirers; his life seems to have been an unblemished series of events and it is possible to read beneath his protestations of being ready to meet his fate that he would prefer to stay alive. The best evidence for Elesin’s ambivalence comes in how easily he is swayed by the (future) Bride, 36 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

who is not supposed to be part of the ritual at all. He notices a pretty woman and must have her, even though this is not part of the ritual, and she is betrothed to someone else. In fact, Iyaloja, for all of her fervent support of Elesin at this point in the play, counsels him: “When the moment comes, don’t let the food turn to rodents’ droppings in their mouth. Don’t let them taste the ashes of the world when they step out at dawn to breathe the morning dew” and “The swallow is never seen to peck holes in its nest when it is time to move with the season. There are always throngs of humanity behind the leave-taker”. Her words are transparent enough that Elesin takes offense at them, telling her after she counsels him to be wary of his seed being cursed, “You really mistake my person Iyaloja”. As critic Wole Ogundele writes, “the moral complexion of [Elesin’s] character changes: what before was heroic self- assertiveness now becomes irresponsible self-indulgence, with catastrophic consequences for all.” The District Officer, Simon Pilkings, and his wife, Jane Pilkings, are dancing together on the verandah of their bungalow. They are wearing egungun costumes. One of the Native Administration policemen, Amusa, comes up, sees what they are wearing, and accidentally turns over a flowerpot in his distress. Pilkings asks what the matter is, and Jane tells him it is their dress. Pilkings takes off his mask and chides Amusa, asking if he really believes that nonsense. Scared, Amusa replies that the outfit belongs to the cult of the dead. He begs them to take the costumes off, but they refuse, as they are going to a ball soon. Jane tells her husband it does not look like Amusa can talk to them like this, but Pilkings, annoyed, says Amusa needs to remember he is a policeman in His Majesty’s Government, and he orders Amusa to report his business. Amusa stammers, “How can man talk against death to person in uniform of death?”. Jane tries to reason with him, asking how he can be scared of the costume, especially as he saw it confiscated from the egungun men who were causing trouble in town. Amusa, quietly, says he will arrest the men but not touch the costumes at all. Pilkings is frustrated; he says that when they get like this there is nothing to be done. They leave the room so Amusa can write on the pad. He then leaves. Pilkings reads what he wrote and tells Jane. It seems a prominent chief, Elesin Oba, is going to commit ritual suicide, which is a criminal offense. Pilkings muses that he thought all this was stamped out, but it is always there under the surface. He says it might be rumors, to which Jane replies that she thought he felt Amusa’s rumors were unreliable. Jane asks if he ought to talk to Elesin before arresting him, especially as this evidence seems uncorroborated. Pilkings calls in Joseph, his houseboy. He asks Jane about the drums in the 37 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

distance, if they sound different. He knows the natives always want to make a racket, but it seems unsettling. Joseph comes in and Pilkings asks if he is Christian and if this outfit bothers him. Joseph replies that he is and it does not. Pilkings asks about the chief, and Joseph says the man will not kill himself but will simply die because it is the custom. Pilkings comments that he often has to clash with that chief and remembers having an issue before. He was helping the chief’s son get into medical school in England, which the chief fought passionately. He ended up having to help the boy escape without his father’s knowledge. Jane and Joseph tell Pilkings that there is perhaps more going on if Elesin dies before he can join the King, Olunde, the son, would have to take his place. Pilkings says it is no wonder the son left, but concedes he does not know if Olunde knew that. Jane responds that the natives are very private, but Pilkings snaps that they are always willing to blurt out their secrets. Jane muses, “do they really give anything away? I mean, anything that really counts”. Pilkings mutters, “sly, devious bastards” and Joseph asks if he can go. Pilkings says he can, and he forgot he was there. Pilkings and Jane argue about using swear words. It grows quiet but the drumming is heard. Joseph comes back and his master asks him about the sound. Joseph says he is confused because it sounds like the death and the marriage of a great chief. Pilkings offends him by making a joke about holy water, and Jane rebukes him after the boy leaves, saying the new African converts take religion very seriously. Pilkings scoffs that she is ridiculous. The conversation turns back to the chief. Jane says he must stop it, but he blusters that he does not care about their barbaric customs, and he would be embarrassed if it really was a wedding and he broke it up. Finally, he calls Joseph back, who takes a while to return, claiming he did not hear. Pilkings orders Joseph to take Amusa a note. He grudgingly apologizes about the holy water comment. Joseph leaves, and Pilkings tells his wife to get her costume ready because they are going to the ball. He adds that his note said to arrest Elesin. As they prepare to leave Pilkings shares that the prince is touring the colonies and will be at the ball later. Jane replies that she now knows why he was so edgy earlier. Pilkings tells her to shut up and come along. She jokes back and they depart. Death and the King’s Horseman is very different from the first: the language is simpler and more prosaic, the theatrics of ritual are replaced by the mundaneness of bureaucratic colonialism, and the stirring figures of Elesin and Iyaloja give way to the nonentities of Pilkings and his wife. That is not to say Pilkings is not a significant character, for if there is 38 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

one specific antagonist to Elesin’s protagonist it is he, but critics largely view Pilkings as a “type” rather than a fully fleshed character. Critic and professor Tanure Ojaide states that “Simon Pilkings is portrayed as a typical district officer rather than an individual” and is “symbolic of the colonial administrator rather than just a male character.” Indeed, this act is rife with examples of how Pilkings embodies the worst traits of the European colonizer. First of all, he and his wife are completely culturally insensitive, parading around in the egungun costumes without bothering to learn anything about what they mean to the Nigerian people. When Amusa expresses his trepidation about being near the costumes, Pilkings mocks him. Pilkings also mocks the young houseboy, Joseph; interestingly, he mocks him for his embrace of Western religion and “elephantine notions of tact”, which are things that Europeans purportedly aimed to achieve in their colonial endeavors. Other examples of this conspicuous lack of understanding of the people he has supposedly come to “civilize” are his actions of sending Olunde away to England without Elesin’s permission and dismissing Nigerians’ extended kin networks as mere opportunities to shield illegitimate children –”Elastic family, no bastards”. There are many examples of Pilkings saying offensive things about the Nigerian people, and dismissing them as stupid, ignorant, and childlike. He rolls his eyes at Amusa’s fear and says to Jane, “When they get this way there is nothing you can do. It’s simply hammering against a brick wall”. He upholds the English colonial experiment and rues the fact that Nigerians have not fallen in line, commenting in response to hearing about Elesin, “You think you’ve stamped it all out but it’s always lurking under the surface somewhere”. He comments derisively that the natives will “open their mouths and yap about their family secrets before you can stop them” and that they are “sly, devious bastards”. Pilkings also seems to have a streak of misogyny in him, something not uncommon in Western culture. His words to Jane at the end of the act, while ostensibly joking, are still harsh: “Shut up woman and get your things on”. Jane laughs along with her husband, but in other instances in the text seems to be frustrated with her husband’s rudeness. Ojaide notes that while Pilkings is a type –the colonial administrator –” Jane is more individualized” and “It seems [students] see in her the humane and sensitive aspects of womanhood that are lacking in Simon.” She cautions Pilkings not to be rash in concluding Elesin is guilty, urges him to be kinder to Joseph, and defends the Nigerians’ “chatter” by commenting that while they may talk a lot, “do they really give anything away? I mean, anything that really counts. This affair for instance, we didn’t know they still practiced that custom, did we?”. Overall, Jane is more nuanced and capable of thinking more deeply about the relationship between the English and Nigerians, although it would be a mistake to claim that she is not still a product of the dominant race. 39 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The front of a stall in the marketplace is covered with rich cloths. The women are agitated. Amusa and his two constables have their batons out and try to use them to push past the women, who hold firm. The women begin to tease Amusa, calling him a eunuch and telling him to go back to the white man who sent him Amusa protests that he will come back with weapons and tries to talk over their jeers. The women say their husband and father will prove himself stronger than the white man’s government tonight. Iyaloja arrives and Amusa appeals to her. He says he is going to arrest Elesin for criminal intent, and that the women need to stop obstructing him. Iyaloja replies that this is merely a wedding. Amusa is frustrated with the insults lobbied at him. Several younger girls break through and start threatening Amusa that he no longer knows his mother or the ways of the marketplace. They knock off the men’s hats, and then begin to pretend to be Englishmen, mimicking their accents, affectations, and sentiments. At the end, one calls out “Sergeant!” and Amusa actually snaps to attention. The girls collapse in hysterics. Amusa is enraged and Iyaloja gently cautions the girls. Finally, Amusa and his men leave, promising to come back. The women and girls begin dancing and singing. Elesin, wearing only a white wrapper, emerges, holding a white folded velvet cloth. He hands it slowly to Iyaloja and says it represents the “union of life and seeds of passage”. He listens and says it is nearly time to go. The bride also emerges, Elesin says their consummation is not quite done, and she must stay by him until he passes on. He then praises the marketplace. He listens again and hears that the King’s dog and the King’s horse are being killed before him. His eyes cloud and he smile faintly. He says his spirit is eager and he is ready. He seems in a state of semi-hypnosis. He asks the mothers to let him dance into his next passage. His own dance now becomes solemn and slow. The praise-singer joins him and asks if Elesin can hear his voice. Elesin replies, faintly, that he can. The praise-singer continues to speak to Elesin to make him ready. Elesin says, “I have freed myself of earth and now it’s getting dark. Strange voices guide my feet”. He appears in a deeper trance. Iyaloja speaks of death and its different types –Elesin “dies the unknowable death of death…”. The praise-singer tells Elesin he cannot sense his body anymore and that he has gone ahead of the world. 40 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Elesin is far into his trance. The praise-singer continues to speak to him of the sounds he might hear and the sight of light at the end of the passage. He asks if he sees the “dark groom and master of life”. The praise-singer is overcome with emotion. Elesin dances on, heavily. Act III in many respects is akin to Act I, as the ritual continues with all of its theatricality and traditional Yoruba references and folk sayings, but here the outside forces of colonial authority permeate the bubble of the marketplace. First Amusa and the constables come close to disrupting the ritual but are momentarily staved off by the women and girls, and then, as we learn in the subsequent act, actually do return and arrest Elesin before he can die (although this happens offstage). Important to note before continuing on to discuss the ritual is the stature of the women and girls in this act. They are very powerful and assertive here, keeping Amusa and the constables at bay with both their bodies and their taunts. In particular, their aping of English accents and verbal/behavioral tics is one of the most satisfying moments of the play. Even though they are not ultimately successful in preventing Elesin’s imprisonment, through their taunts they are able to demonstrate their power and wit. Interestingly enough, their boldness and loudness is in striking contrast to that of the Bride, who is mute not just in this act but in the entire play. It seems as if this particular woman’s vital life force has been sacrificed for the desires and whims of Elesin. The rest of the act concerns Elesin’s putative carrying out of the ritual. He proclaims his success at consummating the marriage, and that the fruit of their union “is intermingled with the promise of future life. All is prepared” (40). He speaks of how eager his spirit is to move on, and asks rhetorically, “Do you know friends, the horse is born to this one destiny, to bear the burden that is man upon its back” (41). The praise-singer and Elesin engage in the same call- and-response, and Elesin sinks deeper and deeper into his trance. It seems as if the ritual will be fulfilled; critic Jasbir Jain writes, “It is a shamanistic act and symbolizes total withdrawal at a moment of total involvement. This, at one level, is the true ending in which the initial ritual designed to emphasize both will and order is enacted.” This ritual is, of course, the main concern of the text. Scholar Adebayo Williams offers interesting insights into its function in a critical article on the text. He begins by noting how ritual is not something that is much practiced or understood in the Western world, particularly in the modern age. Rituals are meant to satiate human needs and desires, and even though it seems harsh, human sacrifice is sometimes a part of that. In Death and the King’s Horseman,” the crisis in the play stems from an acute political and psychological threat to the ritual of 41 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

human sacrifice.” Pilkings, as a representative of the external force, is not saving Elesin’s life and reinforcing civilization; rather, he is pulling at the threads of a culture he knows little about. The place and moment in time –Nigeria, in the twilight of the colonial empire –is an important one, for this ritual is more important than ever to the native peoples. And as Soyinka based this on real events, “[the play] represents an attempt to confront on a creative level the arrogance and cultural chauvinism of Western imperialism” as it attempts to remake Nigerian society in its own (deeply flawed and very different) image. Soyinka attempts to depict just how important it is that Elesin carry out the ritual, and how devastating it is when he cannot do so. Williams’s analysis reveals how Elesin, however, is not a particularly inspiring figure and how the Nigerians, infiltrated so completely by the Europeans and their “various fetishes of political authority and cultural power” can now “only produce an Elesin, a pathetic but ultimately subversive caricature of his illustrious forbearers.” Williams sees Elesin as weak, posturing, histrionic, and prideful, and argues that this is indeed because of the long history of imperialism in Nigeria that renders the country’s great men impotent. At the ball, everyone waits for the prince, who finally enters with a companion. The Resident and his partner enter behind. A Viennese waltz is called for. Everyone hopes to be noticed, even though they are wearing costumes. Pilkings and Jane get their turn and are admired. A footman brings a note to the Resident, who grabs Pilkings and takes him aside. He asks about the chief and the market women rioting; he criticizes Pilkings for not knowing about all this in advance. The native police officers’ approach, and the Resident is confused, as he thought the English gave them some colorful identifying pieces of clothing. Pilkings says their hats came off in the riot. When Amusa sees Pilkings, he averts his eyes and mumbles about the dead. Exasperated, Pilkings relieves him of his duties for the day. Pilkings prepares to leave. The clock strikes midnight and Pilkings and Jane look at each other in horror; they wonder if the act was completed. Pilkings and the policemen leave in a hurry. As Jane waits, the figure of Olunde emerges out of the darkness. He and Jane greet each other, Jane effusive and friendly. Olunde says he came to see her husband. He makes alight quip about her desecrating an ancestral mask, and she is disappointed he cares about that. Olunde 42 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

says he is not mad but has learned that the English do not respect the things they do not understand. It is uncomfortably quiet for a moment. Jane says she is sorry he did not find his time in England edifying. He corrects her and says he did, and he admires the English for certain things, like their conduct in this war. Jane brings up a captain who sacrificed himself for hundreds of other people. She does not seem very condoning, but Olunde admires the man’s self-sacrifice. After a moment, Olunde urges her to tell him where he can find her husband; he must talk to him. Jane alludes to what he husband is doing for him, and for all black people. Olunde says he knows what is going on, that he prepared to come home as soon as he received a cable that the King was dead. He has come home to bury his father. Jane is shocked. Olunde explains that there is no other protection needed for Elesin besides the honor and veneration of his own people. Jane criticizes him for his feudalistic and barbaric outlook and customs. Olunde responds by gesturing to the ball, a party during wartime. Jane stiffly says it is for therapy. Olunde calls it decadence but says he admires the white man’s ability to survive; by all accounts white men should have warred and wiped themselves out but they know how to survive. They argue over suicide, with Olunde taking the side that this war contains mass suicide. He adds that at least Nigerians do not call something what it is not. Eventually, Jane asks him if he will promise to resume his training and become a doctor. Surprised, Olunde says of course he will. Suddenly the drums change their tune and Olunde announces that his father is dead. Jane screams that he is callous and savage. The Resident’s Aide-de-Camp rushes over, solicitous to Jane and cruel to Olunde. He threatens Olunde, but Jane calms down and tells him everything is aright. The Aide-de-Camp huffs that as soon as natives put a suit on they think they are high and mighty. He leaves. Jane asks Olunde softly if he can explain how he has this acceptance and peace of his father’s death. Olunde kindly replies that he started mourning for his father as soon as he heard the King died. He knew it was his duty and he did not want to dishonor his people. Jane is confused, saying to Olunde that his father disowned him. Olunde says he was stubborn and did not mean it. Jane is calmer now and thanks him. At this moment, Pilkings returns. He urgently asks for Bob, the Aide-de-Camp. Olunde thanks Pilkings for not interfering. Pilkings looks uncomfortable. He turns to the Aide- de-Camp when he arrives and starts discussing an old storeroom where slaves were kept before they were shipped away. 43 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

His manner and words are confusing to Jane and Olunde. Olunde wonders if all this fuss can be because his father killed himself. Suddenly they hear Elesin far off, bellowing like an animal and yelling for the white men not to touch him. Jane tries to pull Olunde away. Elesin is brought in. He stops like a statue in front of his son. Jane cries that they should not hold him like that, and he is released. Elesin collapses before his son. Olunde says coldly, “I have no father, eater of left-overs”. He walks away and Elesin crumples. When this section opens the reader/audience does not yet know if Amusa and his constables were successful, and they do not figure out that Elesin was indeed prevented from ritual suicide until the end of the act. Of course, Elesin’s fate never was much in doubt, and there is some irony listening to Jane and Olunde wondering why all the fuss if Elesin killed himself; it is inevitable to us that the forces of the colonizer will succeed. Before addressing such matters, it bears looking at the character of Olunde, who comes across as perhaps the most sympathetic and wisest character in the play. First of all, his behavior itself suggests his composure and wisdom. He talks politely to Jane but is not deferential or fawning to her; he challenges her when he has cause to, but actually cares to help her understand his point of view and that of his people. He is does not begrudge the Europeans some admirable qualities but is firm in his belief that many of the things they do and say are deeply flawed. Examples of Olunde’s trenchant insights and rejoinders include his comments “I discovered you have no respect for the things you do not understand”, “What can you offer [Elesin] in place of his peace of mind, in place of the honor and veneration of his own people?” and “You believe that everything which appears to make sense was learnt from you”. The critic Adebayo Williams waxes poetic about Olunde, writing, “He is armed with immense personal courage and conviction; and his considerable intellect has been honed by a sustained contact with the alien culture in all of its contradictions and foibles. He is therefore a perfect match and counterfoil to the arrogance and chauvinism of the colonial administrators.” It is also quite appealing when he calls out the decadence of the ball during a time of war, although Jane seems skeptical of it as well. This interlude between Jane and Olunde is fascinating, because it ably depicts the fundamental differences between English and Nigerian society. Jane’s willingness to listen, albeit couched in outbursts and ignorance, is a possible opening to understanding, but the difference would still remain. The story of the captain in the war is emblematic of these warring viewpoints: Jane sees the man’s deliberate death as unwarranted, and Olunde lauds it as self-sacrifice and an affirmation of life. Interestingly, as critic James Booth notes, “the chief point this spectacle is 44 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

intended to raise, with typical Soyinkan complexity, is that self-sacrifice is as characteristic of Europe as of Africa” and that Olunde’s actions will mirror those of the captain. Finally, the most important moments of the play come at the end, when it is revealed that Elesin did not kill himself but was instead arrested. Olunde’s reaction is decidedly harsh, and thus does not indicate what role he will play in Act V. Soyinka ably creates a tension between the sympathetic nature of Elesin’s failure, prostration, and humbling, and the unwelcome yet unsurprising awareness that the Europeans triumphed through the thwarting of the ritual. Elesin is chained up in a prison cell. His bride sits mutely outside the cell. Pilkings come in and observes the prisoner. He muses that Elesin seems fascinated by the moon. Elesin replies to the “ghostly one” that he is indeed. Pilkings thinks the night is peaceful but Elesin counters that it is not: Pilkings shattered the peace forever and destroyed, not saved, Elesin’s life. Pilkings retorts that he was doing his duty, but Elesin sees that they have a very different understanding of duty. Elesin ruminates that he is no longer mad at Pilkings and wonders if this is part of some larger plan. Perhaps Pilkings meant to push the world off course. What is most tragic is how the roles of father and son are reversed. For Elesin, though, he is proud that he truly has a son; he knows Olunde will avenge his shame. Pilkings shrugs and relays Olunde’s words that as he cannot judge his father, he cannot despise him. Pilkings also adds that he advised Olunde to return to England. Elesin sighs that this might be best because he lost his father’s place of honor. After a moment Pilkings asks Elesin about the contradictions of his own race, as with the send- off Elesin was receiving. Before the chief can answer, running feet are heard. Pilkings leaves to join Jane. Elesin turns to his bride and speaks of blame. He says he blamed the white man, then his gods, and wants to blame her, but he knows that she was more than a desire of the flesh, and that she was “the final gift of the living to their emissary to the land of the ancestors”. Jane and Pilkings return, arguing about her possible interference. It seems Iyaloja is here, and Pilkings is reluctant to let her visit. As Pilkings goes to let her in, Elesin comments that his own wife is silent, and Jane is too talkative. Pilkings orders Elesin not to try anything funny, and the chief sighs that there is no point and that his honor is entirely gone. Iyaloja begins to speak angrily to the chastened chief, becoming more incensed when she sees the bride there. Elesin tries to defend himself, saying she saw what happened when the shadow 45 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

of the stranger fell upon him and how his power was gone when the iron touched his wrists. Iyaloja speaks only of the betrayal, and how he led them on as a leader. She says several times that she came with a burden. She alludes to a reversal of the cycle of their being. Once, she steps beyond the line drawn by Pilkings and is accosted by a guard. Pilkings tells her she better leave. Iyaloja speaks abstrusely, which annoys Pilkings. She tells him she is not there to help him understand and speaks more of burdens and asks him to release the King so he can ride homeward by himself. The Aide-de-Camp runs in and says a group of women and a few men are coming up the hill. Pilkings is worried and frustrated, especially as he thinks Olunde might be involved. Jane says her husband should trust Olunde. He tells Bob to let them in and have Olunde be ready to leave for England. When he comments that he will shoot if they make trouble, Iyaloja sighs, “to prevent one death you will actually make other deaths? Ah, great is the wisdom of the white race” . The women come in, carrying a longish object covered in cloth. They set it down. Elesin begs to be let out because he has a duty to fulfill but Pilkings refuses. Elesin says he must speak softly and secretly. The Praise-singer, who is also there, intones words about the journey to come and tells Elesin to whisper to his shadow. The object is revealed as the body of Olunde. Iyaloja says he intervened so honor would not fly away, and the son is now the father. The Praise-Singer criticizes Elesin for sitting on the side while the evil ones pushed the world off its course. Elesin is fixated on his son. Suddenly he strangles himself with the chain before anyone can intervene. Iyaloja rebukes the white men for trying to stop him, commenting that he has finally gone on even though it is so late. Pilkings asks if this is what she wanted and she says no, but he brought it to be. When Pilkings reaches to close Elesin’s eyes she yells at him to stop treating him like “pauper’s carrion” , and the Bride steps in to do it. Iyaloja and the Bride leave. The women sway and the dirge is louder. The play ends with two stunning, and perhaps surprising to some readers/audiences, events – Olunde’s suicide to complete the ritual, and Elesin’s suicide to attempt atonement for his 46 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

failure. There are three important parts of this last act, which include the conversation between Pilkings and Elesin, Iyaloja’s chastising of Elesin, and the final moments of the play, in which Olunde’s body is revealed, Elesin kills himself, and Iyaloja chastises Pilkings. The conversation between Elesin and Pilkings is illuminating, as it offers insights into Elesin’s character and failure, as well as the differences between the two men. The main point of difference is duty, which Elesin believes was tied to his role in the ritual and Pilkings believed was tied to his role as a colonial administrator. Elesin’s failure, which is absolute, occupies the thoughts of many critics, who try to explain why this occurred as it did. Elesin himself wanders through various avenues of blame, telling his Bride he blamed the white man, his gods, and her, before he considered his own role: “my weakness came not merely from the abomination of the white man who came violently into my fading presence, there was also a weight of longing on my earth-held limbs” (65). Indeed, many critics point to Elesin’s own ties to the sublunary world as evidence for why the failure occurs. Tanure Ojaide writes, “Elesin’s failure is not refusing to die, but not dying at the appropriate moment. It is a ritual and there is a time for everything. However, Elesin delays and provides the opportunity for his arrest and the excuse not to die.” Wole Ogundele adds something to this, though, writing, “the play as a whole is more concerned with the inevitability of [Elesin’s] failure –plus its causes and effects –than with finding a villain.” Olunde’s decision to commit suicide to fulfill the ritual has also provided much fodder for discussion. Tanure Ojaide writes, “Generally, the Yoruba are absorptive and borrow from other cultures what can strengthen theirs. Olunde’s stay in England and his medical training only convinced him more about his father’s responsibility of self-sacrifice”; clearly, he attained a greater “faith in his culture and people.” One critic, Adebayo Williams, deals with criticism of the suicide part of the ritual, positing if Olunde’s suicide meant that he “succumbed to the whims of a reactionary culture and a flagrantly feudalistic ethos. Indeed, for critics of this persuasion, there may be something paradoxically progressive in Elesin’s refusal to honor his oath.” He concludes, “Yet despite the enormous integrity of Olunde’s self-sacrifice, it is difficult to identify the point at which his role as a cultural hero ends and where his role as the rearguard defender of a backward-looking political order prevails. But Soyinka does not leave us in doubt as to his conviction that, if suicide is the ultimate option available to African revolutionary intelligentsia in the struggle for a cultural revalidation of the continent, it must be embraced without flinching.” Iyaloja’s harsh words to Elesin seem to be both warranted and unwarranted. Ogundele does not let her and the others off the hook, writing, “Yet to ask how Elesin came under the delusion of 47 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

total power and freedom, to the point where he wreaks so much havoc on himself and his community, is to implicate that community as well as its ethos which sanctions certain forms of morally ambiguous actions in its leaders. If Elesin is guilty of self-indulgence, then the community indulged him.” Elesin can be blamed, certainly, but given the situation brought about by colonialism, it seems unfair to have him shoulder all of it. Elesin’s own suicide ends the play, and Iyaloja has the last word against Pilkings. It is an imperfect and no doubt fleeting moment of power for her as the representative of the community, but it is something. 2.8 QUOTES  This market is my roost. When I come among the women, I am a chicken with a hundred mothers. In this quote Elesin explains why he must go to the marketplace before he travels on to the next world as part of the ritual. The women and the girls are his spiritual mothers, daughters, and wives, and he must be around them so they can give him the affirmation he needs. He must be in that physical space that has so much spiritual significance; the marketplace is representative of life, but also of an interstitial space that prepares Elesin to move from life to death.  Iyaloja, who is she? I saw her enter your stall; all daughters I know well. Elesin possesses a great zest for life, and one of his pursuits is that of women: he claims that he wooed often and rarely was refused. He is used to getting what he wants, and when he sees a beautiful woman on the eve of his ritual death, he decides he must have her. This is important not only in further entrenching our understanding of Elesin as a man committed to the pursuit of pleasure in all capacities, but because it offers the first glimmers of suggesting Elesin is not ready to die. That he is so easily swayed and ignores Iyaloja’s warnings foreshadows his inability to carry out his role in the ritual. It is a misstep, and a fatal one for both Elesin and Olunde.  When they get this way there is nothing you can do. It’s simply hammering against a brick wall. Pilkings offers several ignorant, callous, and patronizing comments about the Nigerians throughout the text, and this is one of them. He is annoyed that Amusa will not get over his fear of the egungun costumes and begins to rail at and ridicule him. This speaks volumes about Pilkings: he is ignorant of the customs of the place he was sent to live and work in, he is 48 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

unsympathetic and callous towards people who are different than him, he is short-tempered and mean, and he is patronizing and condescending. His behavior towards Amusa symbolizes the behavior of Europeans generally towards their colonial subjects, and one of the reasons why the entire situation was so fraught.  You know this business has to be stopped, Simon. And you are the only man who can do it. Jane’s comment here is telling, for it demonstrates the mantle of authority and power Europeans took upon themselves to order the affairs of their colonial subjects, most of the time without any permission or acceptance. Jane believes it is her husband’s right, responsibility, and personal duty to stop Elesin from killing himself. She believes this because of the position that Pilkings holds, and by mere dint of him being a European. She, and others, never contemplate that to intervene in the sacred affairs of the Nigerian people is not their right.  We don’t want the eater of white left-overs at the feast their hands have prepared. The scene where the girls mock Amusa is amusing, but also offers insights into the difficulties colonial peoples were subject to as a result of imperialism. Amusa is certainly unlikeable and seems to be a traitor to his people by working for the colonial administrators. However, this choice makes sense in light of the situation, for people like Amusa and countless other examples in colonial territories believed that working with the Europeans would offer them financial and social stability. Thus, Amusa can be seen as a pitiful figure because he is part of a system that oppresses all colonized peoples, but in different fashions. He is in a difficult spot, and the reader/audience finds it easy both to ridicule and feel sorry for him.  Is there now a streak of light at the end of the passage, a light I dare not look upon? In the second part of the ritual, following Elesin’s consummation of his new marriage, the praise-singer resumes his responsibility of the facilitator of the ritual. He speaks in parables and stories and asks rhetorical questions of Elesin, guiding him into a trance-like state in which he can contemplate his upcoming suicide and prepare his spirit for it. By the time he utters these words, Elesin is close to achieving his aim. However, Soyinka increases the dramatic tension in the work by ending the act right after this interlude, making it seem as if Elesin succeeds. In the next act it becomes clear that he did not and was arrested moments after the praise-singer utters these words. Returning to them is instructive, as the reader can now put together the reality of the scene that took place offstage -Elesin’s reverie is brutally interrupted by Amusa and his officers, and he is clamped in irons before he can carry out his duty. The trance, and the ritual, is broken. 49 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Then I slowly realised that your greatest art is the art of survival. But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way. Olunde is unafraid of saying what he means to the Europeans. In his conversation with Jane, he reveals his perspicacity and wisdom, gleaned from living in both England and Nigeria. He is able to commend the British for certain characteristics, but ultimately understands that they are a race of men only able to adapt and survive, not achieve heights of culture, wisdom, or morality. This quote underscores one of the fundamental problems with the entire colonial era -European countries have goals and ambitions for themselves, which may not be inherently wrong, but along the way of achieving these they trample over other societies. They develop a tunnel vision, convincing themselves of their virtue and power, which is, of course, incapable of being legitimated: races and countries and groups are different from each other, but how can one begin to judge which is inherently better? Olunde exposes this false set of beliefs, making him an important anticolonial voice. The once-strong Elesin, now clamped in irons, is dragged in before the Europeans and his son. His failure is complete, his abjectness unarguable. The reader/audience may be hoping for some sympathy for the man, as he exemplifies all the traumas of colonialism; but Olunde rebukes him sharply. He denounces him, and uses that phrase common in the text, “eater of left-overs.” This compares Elesin to a dog, which is something that Iyaloja does later in the text as well. It is a profound insult and designates Elesin as unworthy of their civilization. However, below the surface meaning there is also the foreshadowing that Olunde will take Elesin’s place, as he no longer has a father and must be the king’s horseman.  First, I blamed the white man, then I blamed my gods for deserting me. Now I feel I want to blame you for the mystery of the sapping of my will. There are several layers of blame in terms of why Elesin fails. There is the problem with Elesin himself, who demonstrated that he was firmly tied to the sublunary world and was not quite ready for death. There is Pilkings, the individual man who used his power to intervene in the ritual. Then, there is colonialism itself, which brought this outsider force into Nigeria, bringing chaos, trauma, oppression, and despair. By the 1940s, when the text is set, colonialism is entrenched, and many aspects of traditional Nigerian religion and culture are vanishing. Despite our interest in seeing Elesin succeed, it is not very likely that he would have been able to. Elesin wonders if his failure is due to his gods, and if that is the case, it is only because Nigerian gods and not as powerful as European bureaucracy. Because he could not bear to let honor fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums. 50 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)