Influential African novelists have long focused on tackling difficult issues occurring in their respective countries. One enduring issue that writers have explored is gender. Common questions are: how are gender norms established? Why are women...

Soyinka presents Yoruba women in contrasting ways by showing the different roles of women both as in the Yoruba culture, in the case of Iyaloja and the young bride (as well as the communal and individual roles of women) and in a contrasting...

As in other plays, reflecting a specific culture, “Death and the King’s Horseman” has kept close to religious and traditional issues, but it has shaped culture into a great tragedy. Aristotle defines tragedy in his book poetics as:

A tragedy is...

In Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka tells the dramatized version of true events that happened in the Yoruban city of Oyo in 1946. A Colonial District Officer interrupted a traditional ritual suicide which then led to the death of both...

As seen in the Death and the King’s Horseman, by Wole Soyinka, the Yoruba culture and tradition have very strong, unusual customs and values. This play is centered around one particular custom: when a king dies, his servants and horsemen must die...

Many plays use the balance of power as a theme to drive the plot forward and to define their characters. In A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller, the patriarchal figure of Eddie becomes a tragic hero through his loss of power and reaction to...

In "The Lion and the Jewel", the action is ignited by the arrival of a stranger and a magazine in which Sidi’s images are published. Sidi as ‘the Village Belle’ gets greater media coverage than the almighty ‘Bale’ of Ilujinle, and her images as...

As a satire of greed and corruption in early postcolonial Nigeria, Wole Soyinka’s play The Trials of Brother Jero revolve around three characters’ markedly different approaches to asserting power for themselves and over others.

Brother Jero’s...

Trials of Brother Jero is a one-act satirical play that is divided into five scenes written by playwright, poet and essayist, Wole Soyinka. Soyinka is a multi-award winning playwright and the first African to be awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in...

Critics who have worked on Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests invariably make the point that the play was written for the occasion of the celebration of the independence of Nigeria in 1960 and is thus a metaphorical commentary on the political...

Wole Soyinka once said, “History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice”.A Nigerian playwright, Soyinka, was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. A Dance...