This is an incredible play! Soyinka truly reinvented plays with this work. Its shifts in dialogue from very elevated figurative language when the Nigerians are speaking to the more colloquial and basic jargon of the British who colonized the country is fascinating. It explores themes of race, principles and the practice of willing oneself to die. I recommend this play to anyone who has the time to really analyze and understand the language.

This was an amazing play! The dialogue was fantastic and lyrical, and the mood was tense and dark. The need to fulfill tradition and duty are overpowering as the play confronts the issues surrounding death, culture, religion, and race. I'm super excited to go see this play preformed in London! Its incredibly moving to read and I'm sure it will be even better preformed!

Be sure to read the author's note, because if you don't, you might take it as an East vs. West, colonial vs. tribal, new vs. old story as it would appear on first reading. But in his note, Soyinka states that the "threnodic essence" of the work is a theme even more universal: "the numinous passage which links all: transition." Change is indeed common to us all, and as my mother-in-law points out, change is usually perceived as bad. Yet change is something we all must come to terms with, and since one of literature's great benefits is to act as a mental dress rehearsal for life, this lean play (acessible on first reading, yet rich enough to reread) should find a place on every thoughtful reader's shelf.

The university-educated Soyinka (as one can infer from the author's note) has quite the erudite vocabulary, yet the prose style of Death and the King's Horseman reminded me more of ancient Greek tragedy in translation than anything else: simple yet poetic phrasing, and the homespun proverbial sayings of a pre-industrial age. What struck me as an information-age Westerner was how many of these Yoruba sayings (being related to animals or farming) were hard to relate to; an incidental lesson of this book was how detached from the natural world I've become. Visiting nature for recreation isn't the same as having your livelihood dependent on it.

Another aspect of this play that happens to be particularly interesting in juxtaposition to the film juggernaut of Avatar is that neither the Nigerian characters nor the English are portrayed as completely right or wrong, sympathetic or not. Sure, the English come off as somewhat ignorant intruders, yet they act in good faith; conversely, Elesin, the protagonist, initially appears heroic but as events unfold he grows less so. Whereas in Avatar the modern Westerners are evil caricatures and the Na'vi noble savages, in Soyinka's work matters are more nuanced--more like real life.

i played Jane…this sums it up



JANE: Yes. My name, is Jane.
ELESIN: That is my wife sitting down there. You notice how
still and silent she sits? My business is with your husband



JANE: Simon.
PILKINGS: Don't interfere. Please!

Soyinka insists that this play isn't about colonialism vs. native culture, and instead about the place between life and death. However, he did a poor job of focusing on that because the central conflict of this play is certainly British colonialism vs. indigenous Yoruba culture, and how glorious it is. This play is incredible and really thought provoking. It's a quick and easy read and I'd recommend it to everyone.

Of all the Norton Critical Editions I've read recently (and it seems like I'm busting right through my back-log over the past few weeks!), the one whose extra materials I found most useful is Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman. Which is kind of ironic, since a big theme in this post-colonialist Nigerian drama is the cultural arrogance of western white folks who think that because they've been educated in England, they know best how to interpret and control the cultural traditions of the "natives" colonized by the Crown. As I perused the appendices of my scholarly volume, all working to foster an understanding of Nigerian culture and "background sources" in the predominantly-white US undergraduate population, I'll admit to a rueful smile. What would Soyinka think of the book I'm holding in my hands? Obviously, I don't know the answer, but my bet is that he would feel, as he did about many things, somewhat ambivalent. Son of Westernized Anglican schoolteachers and educated in the most toney of Nigerian prep schools before leaving for University in England, Soyinka identified as "truly bi-cultural"; out of this background came a deep grounding in the Western canon, as well as the Yoruba beliefs of his grandfather, and an acquaintance with the ways in which the English thought of their own subjective perceptions as "natural" and "universal," and anything else as barbaric. Perhaps this background explains some of the reason that, in contrast to many of his liberation-era contemporaries, Soyinka wasn't primarily interested in educating white folks about Nigeria, but about making Nigerian literature that referred to its own subjective universe. From the introduction:

Soyinka has no patience for those who argue that works of art are most effective when they are clear, direct and didactic ... [He:] was unhappy with the romanticism, naïveté, and idealization of the African image in classic African novels such as Camara Laye's The Dark Child. He understood the political imperative behind such works - namely, the desire by a whole generation of African writers to counter the European image of Africa - but was categorical in his belief that idealization was not a substitute for what he considered to be literary truth. However, in explaining why he had disavowed and attacked movements that celebrated African or black identity, Soyinka was keen to insist that he was not against the idea of the African world as such ... He wanted the African world ... to be taken for granted as a self-evident cultural experience. As far as Soyinka was concerned, the artist's commitment was not to a particular idea of Africa, a set of political or ideological commitments, but the self-apprehension of the African world.

I have to say, I was cheering Soyinka on here, and I hadn't even started reading his play yet. I've always found it so awkward - almost dirty-feeling - to be reading a novel about a non-US culture, and suddenly get the feeling that its primary goal is to educate US/European/first-world readers about The Other. I mean, novels where the narrator (or even the speaking character!) takes time out to explain every culture-specific term she uses: how unnatural is that? It makes it really difficult to craft believable characters, because who stops in the midst of their dinner preparations to think to themselves, "Now I'll open the refrigerator: a large metal box in the corner of my kitchen, which keeps my food cold via an electric current running through coils near the floor"? This kind of aside is so disruptive to the narrative, and so inaccurately representative of how peoples' minds actually work. (And yeah, that's a comic exaggeration, but I've read examples almost as bad! Even in novels as acclaimed as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, I got this vibe.) In actual life, people take for granted their everyday surroundings and cultural contexts, and I applaud Soyinka for creating characters who do so as well. At the same time, it does make the learning curve on his play a sharp one for anyone coming to it from the Western tradition.

Nevertheless, an aficionada of English literature is never wholly at sea. Death and the King's Horseman opens in an almost Shakespearean manner: Elesin, the primary horseman of the late king, engages in verbal parry and thrust with his "Praise-Singer" in a way that reminded me of a kind of reverse take on Lear's relationship with his Fool. They're bantering about Elesin's planned transition to the land of the spirits and ancestors; the king he served has died, and it's now his duty (along with the King's favorite horse and his trusty dog) to join his master. Central to the play's tragedy is the different metaphysical realities of Yoruba people and their English colonizers: for the English, an act they understand as "suicide" is both a crime and a sin, as well as the end of a life, whereas in the Yoruba cosmos (according to my Norton, at least), Elesin is merely helping the natural order of the world continue on its course by helping the spirit of his King through the door to the world of gods and spirits. Elesin greets his impending transition with cocky joy; he radiates strength and will, dancing with and around the market women, and singing a long song about the foolishness of those who attempt to evade Death. His Praise-Singer is his straight-man and his counter-point as he teases the women, and claims, on his prerogative as an honored man about to pass to the next world, one last young bride:

ELESIN      All you who stand before the spirit that dares

The opening of the last door of passage,

Dare to rid my going of regrets! My wish

Transcends the blotting out of thought

In one mere moment's tremor of the senses.

Do me credit. And do me honour.

I am girded for the route beyond

Burdens of waste and longing.

Then let me travel light. Let

Seed that will not serve the stomach

On the way remain behind. Let it take root

In the earth of my choice, in this earth

I leave behind.

In contrast to this vital, cocksure young horseman, we are introduced to the colonial bureaucrat Simon Pilkings, all set to attend a fancy-dress ball with his wife Jane (in ceremonial "death cult" attire confiscated from the natives, no less) when he gets word of the rumor that a local chief is about to take his own life. Because the Prince is visiting the colony, and because Simon wants to show he is in charge, he takes it upon himself to "save" Elesin from his impending death; tragedy ensues.

Despite certain references and metaphysical contexts of Yoruba life that might be unclear to Western readers, it's obvious that Soyinka is drawing heavily on the traditions of the Western canon as well. The contrast between Elesin's nobility and Pilkings's essential pettiness, for example, is communicated brilliantly through the differences in their modes of speech: whereas Elesin delivers most of his speeches in the nobility of blank verse, Simon's and Jane's speech is utterly banal prose, peppered with bourgeois British colloquialisms:

PILKINGS      You know the Prince is on a tour of the colonies don't you? Well, he docked in the capital only this morning but he is already at the Residency. He is going to grace the ball with his presence later tonight.

JANE      Simon! Not really.

PILKINGS      Yes he is. He's been invited to give away the prizes and he has agreed. You must admit old Engleton is the best Club Secretary we ever had. Quite quick off the mark that lad.

JANE      But how thrilling.

Without giving away too much of the plot and the tragic denouement, I'll just say that the final scene of the play does interesting things with this dichotomy that's been set up between the blind demands of bureaucracy and the individual's ability to be noble within the context of his or her own society. Soyinka apparently despised and fought against the tendency of critics to interpret his play as merely a chronicle of an oppressive colonial encounter, and pleaded with his audiences to look beyond the historical details of the play to the metaphysical truths within. I think the most universal message that I got out of Death and the King's Horseman is that even the traits we hold most intrinsic to our personalities - our confidence that we will react a certain way in a certain situation, our vitality, the decrees of our moral compass that X is right and Y is wrong - are dependent, not only on our general background and upbringing, but on our immediate circumstances, and can be altered forever in a single moment.

Death and the King's Horseman, like all plays, loses a lot by being read on paper rather than watched in performance. I don't read a lot of drama, for exactly this reason: plays yearn to be interpreted by a company, and reading them to myself always comes off as flat. Soyinka's work suffers perhaps more than most drama in this regard, because his Yoruba characters use music and dance as important modes of character expression - modes that are obviously not present in my head. Still, I am glad I read this play and some of its accompanying materials, and I would leap at the chance to see a good performance of it live.

Feverish, cacophonic, and questioning. Pride, lust, duty, honour -- these are but just some of the themes explored within this taut play. Exceedingly human.

The Methuen edition comes with useful notes and contextual information. I found it of immense help in understanding the context of the play.

Though initially difficult to get into, I really loved this play. Usually I am a reader who needs a great deal of character development over plot, but in this play the tragic perfection of the narrative was enough to keep me interested. It was a really fascinating look at a custom that I would have initially believed horrific (the king's horseman has to kill himself to join his lord in the afterlife) and then turns it on its head.

Powerful indictement of colonialism. I want to teach this along with Antigone, since in some ways they are the same story.

I wish I hadn’t read the introduction to this one and gone in blind.
The introduction contained an interview with Soyinka where he said both that the play was a hybrid model of African theatrical arts and Greek tragedy. He also said it was not a play about the clash of cultures or a conflict between equal characters.
So I thought to myself, the moral conflict debate which is what makes a Greek tragedy what it is must be between the Yoruba characters and the colonialists are just a framing device. Great. This should be an interesting chance to learn more about different attitudes to mortality and honour.

Here’s the problem. I don’t think there is a central moral conflict in this play at all. It is extremely clear that the only right course of action is the ritual suicide.

Now I appreciate I may be just being super pedantic but to me this is fine in a didactic morality play but the idea of a clear moral course that is not really challenged is the antithesis of Greek tragedy. In Antigone, the play this one most closely references the chorus and the reader sees the conflict that Creon must uphold public order and punish a traitor whilst Antigone must fulfil her filial duty even if it is illegal. Both are wrong and right. It drives me nuts when modern playwrights claim they are writing a ‘modern Greek tragedy’ which has a clear right course and no true debate. They are focusing on the flourishes and missing the point. A chorus doesn’t make a tragedy.

I wish the play was more about Elesin’s fear of actually going through with the suicide against a character who is all about honour, like Olunde. (This would also have Greek tragic almost parallel in Alcestis. ) That to me seemed the most interesting idea in there but it came across as almost incidental when paired with Pilking’s arrest.

To me, the lack of debate makes this a bit of a weak play. It really does remind me of a morality play and that’s not always a good thing.

A thought-provoking, exciting, and multi-layered play -- it was definitely challenging, though, and I know it would be well worth re-reading; I enjoyed discussing it in my literature class.

The Dance of Death: Spirits of the Living and the Dead
This is a play with a moral/ spiritual theme. It is based on actual real events that took place in Nigeria in 1946. The point of the story is being who you are in the face of a world who wants to change you. It is spirit and will. It is knowing when to let go. It is also about calling things what they are, and living in truth with your own heart and mind. It is about 'leaving some for others' and rejecting greed. The British colonizers are part of the story really only as a backdrop to reflect the 'negative' as in a photographic negative image of the world of Nigeria. The officer and his wife also act as sounding boards for the main characters to explain the author's ideas. There is some interesting symbolism at a Masque dance with costumes that desecrate the dead as well, which portray the colonizers as harbingers of death.

In a remarkable way, the author of this play portrays the spirit of a people who are struggling to maintain their hold on life, and pass that spirit on to the next generation. The main character grasps too greedily for life, leaving nothing behind for those who follow him. The village "Elesin" Oba is to die willingly to follow his King, since he was the King's Horseman. Following the events of his last day of life, we see that he is still firmly rooted in the land of the living, while claiming a willingness to die. His time comes, and the colonizers attempt to interfere. He hopes this is the will of the gods granting him a reprieve from his duty in some new way. He fails to die in this trance state, but is locked up 'for his own good' by the colonial administrator.

Meanwhile, his son, Olunde has received the news of the King's death, so he returns from England where the English sent him to study to become a doctor. He knows his duty will be to be the next Horseman to the new King, once his father is buried. While seeing the strange inconsistencies of the English during war, which he calls 'mass suicide,' he has made the decision to return home to live a life more attuned with the spirit of his fathers, which he sees as more valid and life affirming. When he sees his father's failure, he takes his father's place in following the old King to the afterworld. There is much more, but I will leave the rest for your reading. It is unforgettable!