Death and the King's Horseman Summary

Summary
Death and the Kings Horseman, one of Soyinkas tragedies, presents a representation of the
Yoruba worldview. In Yoruba cosmology, there are three worlds: the world of the living, the
world of the dead, and the world of the unborn. This play focuses on what connects all three
worldstransition, the pathway on which members of the different worlds meet and interact.
The opening of the play involves the ritual ceremonies for the burial of a dead king. Elesin, the
kings horseman, attired in glorious robes, enters the village marketplace in a majestic dance
procession, followed by praise-singers and drummers. Elesin dances until he is in a trance, a state
of transition. He performs poetry and song about the world of the ancestors and the
connectedness of the three worlds.
The purpose of this ceremony is to help the dead king travel peacefully to the world of the dead.
It should conclude with the suicide of Elesin, whose soul will accompany the kings. Elesin sees
a beautiful woman in the crowd and demands one night of love with her before he dies. Iyaloja,
the mother of the marketplace, reluctantly agrees.
Also in the village is the British colonial district officer, Pilking. He is well-meaning but unable
to understand or respect the Yoruban people. He also performs a dance at a gathering of his own
peoplea mocking imitation of an African dance in captured regalia. When Pilking hears of
Elesins intention to die, he has him arrested to prevent it.
Soyinka makes it clear in his preface that this is not a mere clash of cultures; this is not simply a
case of the white colonialist interfering with native culture. Elesin has failed to perform his duty,
and his failure has cosmic significance. The white officer is a catalyst, but he cannot otherwise
affect the village. The cosmic world is untouched by colonialism and materialism.
Elesins son Olunde, a doctor, returns from England. He has heard of the kings death and
assumes that his fathers death is near. Olunde reveres native culture and has had wide
experience of Western culture. He tries unsuccessfully to make Pilking understand Yoruban
belief. Ashamed to see his fathers failure, he kills himself in Elesins place.
When Elesin sees his sons body, he takes his own life. This suicide is the result of shame,
however, not duty, and it cannot repair the bonds that have been broken. The young bride,
pregnant from her one night with Elesin, appears. She ritually closes her husbands eyes as
Iyaloja says, Now forget the dead, forget even the living. Turn your mind only to the unborn.

Death and the King's Horseman Summary

The alafin (king) dies. It is time for his chief lieutenant, Elesin Oba, to will his own death, so that
he might accompany the alafin on his passage to the next life. As Elesin enters the market, the
Praise-Singer pleads with him to tarry a while, to enjoy the last fruits of life in this world. Elesin,
a man of enormous courage, rejects this plea and boasts of his readiness to meet death without

fear. He talks of the Not-I bird that sounds at the approach of death, echoed by people from all
levels of society who seek to flee deathall but he, the kings horseman, who was born and
lived for this moment.
The women of the marketplace, led by Iyaloja, also ask whether he is truly ready to face death,
praising him all the while for his strength of will. On this night, nothing can be denied him: rich
clothing, fine food, beautiful women, all are at his pleasure. A beautiful young woman, the Bride,
catches his eye. He determines that he will have her, even though she is already promised as a
bride to Iyalojas son. Tactfully, Iyaloja suggests that he should not claim the Bride, just as an
honorable man will leave food at a feast for the children. The insistence of the kings horseman
at this moment cannot be denied, however, and Elesin and the woman retire to the bridal
chamber.
At the district officers house, the Pilkingses prepare to attend a costume ball in honor of the
visiting British prince. They are modeling their disguises, ritual masks of the Yoruba dead cult,
when Sergeant Amusa arrives to report a disturbance in the marketplace caused by Elesins
preparations for death. A Muslim, Amusa is flustered by the Pilkingses blasphemous use of the
death masks in a nonreligious context and cannot express himself clearly. The Pilkingses
servant, Joseph, a convert to Christianity, explains what is happening, whereupon Simon Pilkings
decides to halt the ritual suicide, upholding Western ideals of the sanctity of life. Pilkings orders
Amusa to make the arrest while he and his wife go to meet the Prince.
Back in the marketplace, Amusas attempt to enter the bridal chamber and arrest Elesin is
blocked by Iyaloja and the young women, who mock the policeman as a eunuch neutered by the
white colonial authorities. Defeated by the women, Amusa retreats to seek reinforcement. Then
Elesin emerges from the bridal chamber bearing bloodstained bedclothes, evidence of the Brides
virginity and his success in impregnating her, creating a union of life and the passage to death.
Filled with vitality and sexual satisfaction, he momentarily loses his will to die, but recovers and
falls gradually into a trance. As his spirit moves away from this world, his body begins a heavy
dance accompanied by the Praise-Singers ritual pronouncements.
Amusa arrives at the ball in tattered clothing to report his failure to arrest Elesin. Pilkings,
admonished by his supervisor to maintain control, takes matters into his own hands, going off to
arrest Elesin. While he is gone, Elesins son Olunde, whom the Pilkingses befriended and sent to
England to study medicine, arrives, expecting to bury his father after hearing in England of the
alafins death. As Jane Pilkings and Olunde speak of England, Olunde shows that he does not
accept British values, despite his Western education.
Seeking a topic on which they might agree, Olunde and Jane discuss the progress of the war.
Jane tells him of an English naval captain who died while destroying his ship, thereby saving the
city. She finds his self-sacrifice difficult to understand, convinced there must have been another
way. Olunde finds the self-sacrifice life-affirming, being death in the cause of life. Jane then
informs him that her husband is en route to prevent Elesins suicide. Olunde explains that
Pilkingss success would be catastrophic because of the ritual importance of the horsemans
death. Pilkings returns and becomes nervous and distracted on hearing Olundes words. The
mood is explained when a heavily chained Elesin arrives on the scene; Pilkings has succeeded.

Olunde first ignores his fathers presence and then rejects him, calling him, like Amusa, an eater
of leftovers.
In his prison cell beneath the residents palace, Elesin first blames Pilkings for arresting him. The
moment at which Elesin should have joined the alafin on his journey to heaven passed with the
arrest, and it is too late to restore the cosmic order. Elesin claims to have regained his sense of
purpose after experiencing the contempt of his son, but Elesin is no longer able to carry out his
own death. When Pilkings is called away, Elesin shifts blame to the Bride for tempting him away
from his destiny. In truth, the white man only provided an excuse for him to succumb to his
desire to remain in the world, enjoying its pleasures.
The Pilkingses return to the cell to announce a visitor, Iyaloja, who castigates Elesin for his loss
of will and the betrayal of his people. She also announces that a volunteer is found to carry
Elesins last message: that he will not come to the waiting alafin. When the body of this
messenger is carried into the prison area, Pilkings and Elesin are both horrified to recognize
Olunde, who takes his fathers place. In a final affront to Elesins lost honor, Pilkings refuses to
allow Elesin to whisper the ritual message in his sons ear, thusfrom the Yoruba perspective
completing the destruction of the cosmic order. Left with nothing to salvage, Elesin strangles
himself with his own chains before the colonial authorities can react. His death, however, comes
too late to fulfill his hereditary function. What hopes remain lie with the unborn child the Bride
carries, the only fruit of the nights events.

SUMMARY
The play is about contrasts; old versus young and culture versus change. It is the story of Sidi, the village
belle, and her dramatic 'relationship' with Lakunle, the school teacher. Lakunle is courting Sidi, but refuses
to pay the bride price because he views this cultural norm, as well as many other traditional practices of
the village, as barbaric. This young suitor is contrasted with Baroka, the Lion. He too courts Sidi, but he
maintains the traditions of the village and views progress as something that promotes sameness, or a
lack of difference. While Sidi views Lakunle as a bit of a nuisance, she sees Baroka as a challenge. When
Sadiku, Baroka's head wife, reveals that Sidi's refusal of Baroka's marriage proposal has broken him, Sidi
decides to taunt Baroka, and revel in his defeat, with her knowledge. She returns from this venture
defeated, however. The lion had beaten the jewel. Lakunle offers to marry Sidi, despite her lack of
virginity, but Sidi refuses and joyfully goes off to marry Baroka, the lion.
IN DEPTH ANALYSIS
The Lion And The Jewel, one of Nigerian writer Wole Soyinkas best-known plays, was first performed in
1963. It is very much a work of its time: like compatriot Chinua Achebes novels of the 1960s, or poems
such as Song of Lawino (by Ugandan Okot pBitek), which appeared in 1966, it expresses the tensions
felt in many newly-independent African countries between traditional beliefs or customs and the forms of
modernity typically associated with the West.
Soyinka has been criticised for a writing style that betrays a Eurocentric bias, but this play is ultimately an
affirmation of the old rather than the new. Whereas Achebes fiction tends towards the tragic and the
tone of Okots poetry became darker and angrier in later years, The Lion And The Jewel offers a comic
and, it could be argued, problematic resolution.
The tradition-vs-modernity debate may be a well-rehearsed one, but it shows no signs of going away.
Certainly, James Ngcobo, director of the production currently running at the State Theatre in Pretoria,
considers the material relevant. Soyinkas play is strangely apposite in twenty-first century South Africa,
but perhaps not in the ways that Ngcobo and his cast have in mind.
The narrative hinges on an unusual love-triangle. Lakunle (Fezile Mpela) is a schoolteacher who wants to
marry Sidi (Nthati Moshesh) but refuses to pay a bride-price for her, ostensibly because it is one of many
outdated practices of the Yoruba people that do not match his civilised opinions. Sidi, the jewel of the
title, seems to return Lakunles affection but is constantly angered by his condescension towards her as
an uneducated bush girl and by his highfalutin phrasemaking. Moreover, her sense of self-worth
according to traditional criteria for desirability as a bride-to-be is (ironically) increased by her prominence
in a recently-published book of photographs taken by a visitor to the village.
When the bale or autocratic head of the village, Baroka (Sello Maake kaNcube), seeks a new bride to add
to his harem, Sidis growing reputation makes her the most eminent candidate. Sidi rejects his proposal
more out of egotism than fidelity to Lakunle or opposition to a polygamous system but when she hears
that Baroka is impotent, she decides to pretend that she will accept him, in order to taunt him when he is
unable to perform in bed.
Not for nothing is the lion, Baroka, also known as the fox, for he has cunningly circulated a false
rumour about the end of his manhood in order to lure Sidi to his bedroom, where he seduces her (or is it
rape?). When Lakunle hears of this, he despairs until her realises that Sidi, who is no longer a maiden,
does not merit a bride-price. Thus, he thinks, the barrier to their marriage has been removed; and he asks
her again to marry him. But Sidi, impressed by (or scared of) Barokas physical prowess, chooses instead
to marry the chief.
Soyinkas language is rich and unabashedly lyrical. It abounds in imagery, digressive soliloquising and
verbal flourishes, marking his style off from the terse realist dialogue often associated with theatre since
World War Two. The cast does justice to this aspect of the script, clearly enjoying bringing the dense text
to life.

The staging is dynamic, with a multi-level set dominated in the centre by a wire baobab tree rising
suggestively above and behind Barokas bed. The cast make full use of this space as actors and dancers
move across the stage in sharp, coordinated movements; indeed, energetic dancing and drumming
feature prominently, particularly in those scenes where Soyinka has constructed masques, charades or
plays-within-the-play to echo Yoruba pageantry and oral literary techniques.
This insistence on meta-narrative foregrounding the story-telling process at the very moment of telling a
story is present from the start of the play. Two schoolgirls (Gontse Ntshegang and Lesedi Job),
Lakunles pupils, argue over how best to present the tale, as the audience is ushered from the written
word into a performed world in which the girls function simultaneously as narrators, as protagonists and
as a kind of chorus.
These schoolgirls are not innocents, however; they taunt Lakunle, and they take a cruel pleasure in
narrating his downfall. In fact, the story they tell should not really be rendered comically and, despite the
strengths of this particular production, towards the end of the play I found myself disappointed with
Soyinkas views about gender as implemented onstage.
Ultimately, irrespective of whether the traditional or the modern prevails, the play appears to take
patriarchy for granted. At first, when Lakunle uses his book learning to defend chauvinist principles, his
arrogance is undercut by his bumbling speeches. The ignorant Sidi matches him argument for
argument, and it seems that traditional ways are vindicated: perhaps it is a good thing that neither roads
nor railways reach the little village of Ilunjile, bringing with them the false enlightenment of the city (Lagos
or London).
Likewise, it seems that the urban corrupts the rural. Sidi becomes proud and disdainful when she sees
her image printed in a book. The Christian Bible provides no better moral compass than pagan West
African gods such as Sango.
But here the justification of the old ways breaks down. Baroka is comical in his obsession with still being
able to father children at a ripe old age. We hardly feel sorry that this once-great big man of Africa has
lost his manhood. This hints at a possible critique of phallocentrism why should the procreating penis,
sower of seed, be the basic premise on which a claim to power is built?
Unfortunately, however, the play does not explore this possibility; virility remains an unquestioned sine
qua non of the right to rule. Sadiku (Warona Seane) is Barokas first wife, and has been responsible for
procuring his other wives. When Baroka tells her that he is impotent, she is sent into a frenzied soliloquy
in which she celebrates having dried him up, and bitterly affirms that it is in fact women who control men
because they eventually exhaust men sexually: Take warning, my masters well scorch you in the
end!
Now, this is patent hogwash. To suggest that women are actually in charge of patriarchal societies in
Africa because, sooner or later, every man loses his sexual potency, is to accept that the phallus should
be at the centre and to ignore that women across Africa are oppressed, raped and abused by men who
operate on this basis.
That Baroka is finally able to wow Sidi with his virility and potency, to obtain her as a wife by a show of
force (foreshadowed by his wrestling match with a servant), does little but perpetuate male-female
relations that are built on deceit and sexual realpolitik. It really isnt funny.
SETTING

The story is set in the African village of Ilujinle.

The story occurs in a day; morning, noon and night.

CHARACTERS
Sidi

She is the belle of Ilujinle.

This is confirmed by her pictures that were placed in a magazine.

She is being courted by both Lakunle and Baroka.

She is very confident about her looks.

She knows her value, and appreciates her cultural practices, as seen in her refusal to marry
Lakunle without the bride price.

She is a supremely confident young woman who believes that she can taunt the lion without
repercussions.

She is also resilient because she accepts her loss, when her taunting of the lion fails, and joyfully
starts the wedding process.

Baroka

He is the king of Ilujinle.

He is 62 years old, but still very vibrant.

He is called the lion, due to his strength and vitality, as well as the fox, due to his cleverness.

He is a very clever man who is able to get what he wants, as seen in the railway incident.

He is very articulate and creative, as seen in his verbal parlay with Sidi.

He believes that progress equates to sameness, but he tolerates it due to it's inevitability.

Lakunle

He is the local school teacher.

He courted Sidi, but refused to pay her bride price on the grounds that it was a barbaric practice.

He viewed his African heritage, in general, as lowly and barbaric.

He dreams of a time when his village will be completely modernized.

He is infatuated with Sidi.

Sadiku

Baroka's head wife.

She delivered Baroka's proposal to Sidi, and rejoiced in his defeat.

She plotted, with Sidi, to taunt Baroka in his moment of defeat.

CHAPTER SUMMARIES
Morning
Sidi passes the school and Lakunle rushes out to speak to her. He reprimands her for carrying water on
her head and flip flops from wooing her one moment, to insulting her the next. The reader learns that Sidi
is not opposed to marrying Lakunle, but the fact that he refuses to pay her bride price annoys her.
Lakunle refuses to pay the bride price because he believes that it is a primitive practice. The villagers,
who believe Lakunle is mad, rush to tell Sidi that the strangers have brought the book. She learns that
she is the star, and that Baroka was given only a small part. The villagers re-enact that first encounter
with the stranger, with Lakunle accepting the role of the stranger. He does so unwillingly, at first, then with
zeal. Baroka interrupts the re-enactment, then the audience learns of his intention to marry Sidi.
Noon
Sidi walks, engrossed in her picture in the magazine, while being followed by Lakunle. Sadiku approaches
them and tells Sidi that Baroka wants her to become one of his wives. She refuses the privilege based on
Baruka's age, and the fact that she believes that he is jealous of her fame. Sidi believes that Baroka
wants to marry her in order to own her and triumph over her. Lakenle agrees with her assessment and
Saduka believes that Lakenle's madness has transferred to Sidi. She then invites Sidi to a small feast, or
supper, but Sidi refuses this invitation as well. She does so on the basis of the unfavourable rumours that
surround 'Baruka's suppers'. Every woman who has supper with Baruka ends up being a wife or a
prostitute. We then find out, from Lakunle, why Baruka is referred to as the fox. He deviously prevented a
railway from running through the town by bribing the officials in charge. Saduka interrupts Baruka's armpit
plucking session, with his favourite wife, with Sidi's rejection. He reacts by going from shocked, to
defensive, to resigned. He tells Saduka to keep his defeat a secret between them.
Night
Sadiku dances around a tree, celebrating the fact that the lion, Baruka, is defeated. She shares the
secret of Baruka's defeat, at the hands of a woman, and they both rejoice. Lakunle enters and is also
made aware of the lion's demise. Sidi wants to flaunt herself before the lion and mock him, but Sadiku
warns her of his cunning and Lakunle warns her of his savagery. Sidi ignores the warnings and runs off
to mock the lion, and Lakunle is left with Sadiku, who makes derisive comments to him. Sidi enters
Baroka's home, but there are no servants to greet her. She enters the lion's bedroom, where he is
wrestling with a gentleman. A verbal dance occurs between the two wrestlers, with both of them winniing
and losing at different points. After Baroka wins his wrestling match, he turns his attention to Sidi and
starts to beat her at the verbal game that she initiates. Baroka tells Sidi that he will place her face on a
stamp, and relentlessly enlightens her about the advantages of the young learning from the old. She later
returns to Lakunle and Sadiku and reports her failed attempt at mocking the lion, as well as her lost
virginity. Lakunle offers to marry Sidi, despite the loss of her valuable virginity, but refuses to pay the
bride price. She laughs at Lakunle's offer and chooses Baruka, the lion.
THEMES
Power and authority
Women in society
Masculinity
Colonialism
Culture vs. progress
Change
Old versus young