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Drama
Wole Soyinka
 In a 1997 interview, Wole Soyinka
(1934- ), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, explains that
his birth produced a dual affiliation, one historical and one more artificial.
That is, he is both a Yoruban and a Nigerian. The Yoruba as an ethnic
group have lived in a part of what is present-day Nigeria for centuries; Nigeria,
conversely, is a much more recent —and problematic—national entity. Soyinka
explains that the Yoruban is "not the result of any artificial creation or
agreement. It happens to be. It's like your blood." The country of Nigeria,
however, was not there 50 years ago. It was invented. What was the purpose
of that invention? "Was it simply to supply raw material to Great Britain
and to the international and commercial world?" he asked in the same interview.
Soyinka goes on to recount the "military expulsion" of a million people in
the country and his response: "it made me feel ashamed to be a Nigerian in
a time when such things could happen." All of these issues, and particularly
the clash of three cultures—Yoruban, Nigerian, and British—surface in Death
and the King's Horseman, a work Soyinka terms a "densely mythological
play."
Wole Soyinka was born in what
is now western Nigeria to an educated family; his father was in fact a school
supervisor. He attended secondary school in Ibadan, began his college career
there at University College, and completed his undergraduate work with Honors
in England at the University of Leeds. In the later 1950s, he became a play
reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London, then an experimental theater
that produced the early work of such talented cutting-edge writers as John
Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, John
Arden, and others. His career as a playwright began in London, and by the
end of the decade his first plays were being produced in Ibadan as well.
Soyinka returned to Nigeria in
1960, writing and directing plays and beginning what has become a lifetime
of political dissent, in this instance attacking political corruption. He
also initiated a series of university teaching appointments and helped found
the Drama Association of Nigeria in 1964. Throughout the sixties, he continued
to write and direct, expanding his audience to viewers of Britain's BBC as
well. His plays were produced not only in Africa, but in London and New York
as well. At the same time, in the aftermath of Nigeria's civil war in 1967,
Soyinka's resistant politics landed him in prison, from which he continued
to write. Similarly, nearly thirty years later in 1993, Soyinka found himself
on the opposite side of a military coup that prevented a newly elected government
from being installed. His public demonstration against the coup and the military
leaders responsible for it led eventually to his self-exile, his continued
political writing, and—sadly—to the execution of one of his close friends
and political allies.
Death and the King's Horseman
has much to say about all of these issues: Yoruban culture, the imperial arrogance
of Britain in 1946 in responding to this culture, and the tragic results of
this confrontation. At the same time, much like his plays The Strong Breed
and The Bacchae of Euripides, Death and the King's Horseman
also reflects Soyinka's study of Greek classical drama and his understanding
of the notions of tragic heroism, sacrifice, and communal response. In other
words, these plays return readers to drama's roots in public ritual, complete
with scapegoats and Choral figures to lament their inevitable path to sacrifice.
When the play was produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1990,
critic Martin Rohmer also makes a telling remark about production that all
of us should try to remember when reading the play: "It is not sufficient
to have actors ‘playing' dancers or musicians: they have to be dancers
or musicians. . .and they have to reject the notion that communication is
primarily a matter of speech."
In these ways, Soyinka combines
a vital and contemporary political critique with theatrical conventions as
old as the Western theatre—and as native African cultures.
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Selected Bibliography of Soyinka's Work
Plays
The Swamp Dwellers (1958)
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
The Trials of Brother Jero (1960)
A Dance of the Forests (1960)
The Strong Breed (1962)
Kongi's Harvest (1964)
Before the Blackout (1965)
The Road (1969)
Madmen and Specialists (1970)
The Bacchae of Euripides (1973)
Death and the King's Horseman (1976)
Opera Wonyosi (1981, an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera)
A Play of Giants (1984)
From Zia with Love (1992)
A Scourge of Hyacinths (1992)
The Beatification of Area Boy (1995)
Critical Prose and Poetry
Poems from Prison (1967)
The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka (1972)
Myth, Literature, and the African World (1976)
Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1989)
Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture (rev. ed. 1993)
The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (1996)
The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness (1997)
Early Poems (new ed. 1998)
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Further Reading About Soyinka's Work
Adelugba, Dapo, ed. Before Our Very Eyes: Tribute to Wole Soyinka. Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1989.
Byam, Dale. "Art, Exile and Resistance: An Interview with Wole Soyinka." American Theatre 14 (January 1997): 26-29.
Gibbs, James. Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka. Washington: Three Continents, 1980.
Jeyifo, Biodun, ed. Conversations with Wole Soyinka. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
______________. Perspectives on Wole Soyinka: Freedom and Complexity. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
Katrak, Ketu H. Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy: A Study of Dramatic Theory and Practice. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Maja-Pearce, Adewale. Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka? Essays on Censorship London: Heinemann, 1991.
__________________, ed. Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994.
Moody, David. "The Prodigal Father: Discursive Rupture in the Plays of Wole Soyinka." ARIEL 23.1 (1992): 25-38.
Ojaide, Tanure. "Teaching Wole Soyinka's ‘Death and the King's Horseman' to American College Students." College Literature 19/20 (October 1992-February 1993): 210-219.
Quayson, Ato. Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing: Orality and History in the Works of Rev. Samuel Johnson, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, and Ben Okri. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Wright, Derek. Wole Soyinka Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
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