Wole Soyinka: Plays, Dates, Yoruba Myth and Exam Traps

The mistake that costs most marks on Soyinka: students file him next to Chinua Achebe as “the Nigerian novelist” and stop there. Soyinka did write novels, but he is a playwright first. The questions on this site prove it. When an examiner wants to test him, the usual shape is an odd-one-out item: four play titles, one of which is not his. In one paper the stranger was Master Harold…and the Boys, a South African play by Athol Fugard. In another it was Home and Exile, which is Achebe’s. Knowing only “first African Nobel laureate, 1986” wins one mark and loses three.

So this guide treats him as a dramatist first. Learn the plays with dates, three of them in detail, and his line on Negritude. That covers almost everything asked so far.

Why examiners keep picking Soyinka

First, the Nobel. The 1986 prize makes him the anchor of every “Nobel laureate” question that includes African writers. The Swedish Academy praised him as a writer “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence”. Gordimer (1991), Walcott (1992) and Coetzee (2003) are set against him; Achebe, who never won, is the favourite trap.

Second, the early plays come in a tight cluster, staged between 1958 and 1965. That suits “which is not by Soyinka” and “match the play” items, with Walcott, Ngugi, Fugard and Achebe in the other slots.

Third, theory. His jibe at Negritude and his reading of Death and the King’s Horseman turn up in statement-type questions in the postcolonial unit.

My advice: learn the play list with dates cold, and three plays at character level (Death and the King’s Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel, A Dance of the Forests). The novels and memoirs need one line each. Poetry is low priority.

Soyinka’s works in order, with dates

Many early plays were staged years before they were printed, so a question may use either date. Dates follow the Nobel Prize biography.

One date link to remember: the August 2024 UGC NET evening paper asked you to order five works by year, and the Soyinka item in it was Death and the King’s Horseman, 1975. Use the publication year unless a question says “first staged”.

The plays, one by one

The Lion and the Jewel (1959)

A comedy set in the village of Ilujinle. Sidi, the village beauty, is “the jewel”. Lakunle, the Westernised schoolteacher, wants to marry her without paying the bride price and talks endlessly about modern ways. Baroka, the old Bale (village head), is “the lion”. With help from Sadiku, his senior wife, Baroka lets it be known that he has lost his manhood, Sidi goes to mock him, and she comes back as his next bride. The joke is on Lakunle: the “backward” chief outwits the “modern” teacher. This is the play the UP Assistant Professor syllabus prescribes.

A Dance of the Forests (1960)

Written for Nigeria’s independence celebrations in 1960, and the opposite of a celebration. The living summon illustrious ancestors to a great gathering, and the forest sends instead a Dead Man and a Dead Woman, victims of the cruel court of Mata Kharibu centuries earlier. Demoke the carver, Rola and Adenebi turn out to be reincarnations of those who wronged them. The message: the past was no golden age, and a new nation that builds on that myth is fooling itself. On this site’s question pages it sometimes appears as “The Dance of the Forests” or “A Dance of the Forest”; the correct title is A Dance of the Forests.

The Trials of Brother Jero (1960)

A short satire on a fake beach prophet in Lagos who exploits his follower Chume.

The Strong Breed (published 1963)

A one-act tragedy about the “carrier”, a person who carries the village’s evil away at the New Year. Eman, a teacher from outside, takes the place of Ifada, the simple-minded boy chosen for the role, and dies. Eman’s own father was a carrier in his home village, which is why the title calls his line “the strong breed”.

The Road (1965)

Set at a roadside shack used by drivers and touts. Professor, a former lay reader who forges driving licences, searches for “the Word” in the meaning of death. Kotonu is a driver who has given up the road; Samson is his tout; Murano, who cannot speak, was struck by a lorry while possessed in an egungun masquerade. The play links the road to Ogun, god of iron and of the road.

Kongi’s Harvest (staged 1965)

A satire on an African dictator. Kongi wants the traditional king, Oba Danlola, to hand him the New Yam at the festival, so that his power looks sacred. Daodu, Danlola’s heir, and Segi oppose him. A Play of Giants (1984) is the later, blunter satire on real dictators.

Madmen and Specialists (staged 1970)

Written after his civil war imprisonment. Dr Bero, trained as a doctor, comes back from the war as an intelligence “specialist” and holds his own father, the Old Man, captive; four crippled mendicants act as a grotesque chorus. One site question matched it to Soyinka against Walcott, Ngugi and Dennis Scott.

Death and the King’s Horseman (1975)

The most taught Soyinka play. It is based on events in Oyo in 1946, moved back to the war years. The king has died, and Elesin Oba, his horseman, must die by ritual on the night of the burial so that he can accompany the king to the world of the ancestors. Elesin delays to take a young bride that evening, over the doubts of Iyaloja, “mother” of the market. Simon Pilkings, the British District Officer, has him arrested to stop the death. Olunde, Elesin’s eldest son, who has been studying medicine in England, comes home and dies in his father’s place. Elesin then strangles himself with his chain.

The exam point is the author’s note. He rejects the label “clash of cultures” and treats the colonial factor as only the catalyst. The tragedy is Elesin’s own failure of will. A statement that calls the play “chiefly an attack on British colonial rule” is the one to mark as wrong.

Soyinka in the questions on this site

Real previous year questions from the site’s own pages. Several use Soyinka as a distractor, which shows you the names he is set against.

Three lessons. First, his plays are tested by attribution, with wrong options from Fugard, Achebe, Walcott and Ngugi. Second, the Nobel year 1986 appears in matching items alongside 1991, 1992 and 2003. In the August 2024 item, List II printed 1993 where Walcott’s year (1992) should have been, and the answer still worked by elimination. Third, the Negritude point has been set more than once: the June 2024 evening shift paper, Q60 repeats the same statements with one changed. For more practice use the topic-wise PYQ collection and the full previous year question papers.

Negritude, Ogun and the theory behind the plays

The tigritude line. At the 1962 African writers’ conference at Makerere University in Kampala, Soyinka dismissed Negritude with the quip “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.” He later said the point was literary: poetry should show its quality, not announce its identity. Negritude itself belongs to Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas. So if a question asks who coined Negritude, the answer is not Soyinka; if it asks which African writer mocked it, the answer is.

Ogun. Soyinka builds his drama on Yoruba myth with Ogun, god of iron and war, at the centre. In Myth, Literature and the African World (1976) he reads Ogun as the god who first crossed the gulf between gods and humans, and makes that crossing the model for tragedy. Idanre and Ogun Abibiman are his Ogun poems.

English, not Yoruba. Soyinka writes in English, though he draws on Yoruba song, masquerade and proverb. Ngugi wa Thiong’o is the writer who turned away from English; do not give Ngugi’s position to Soyinka. The Nobel biography also names the Irish dramatist J. M. Synge as an influence.

For the wider theory unit, the postcolonial theory PYQs and the guides to Edward Said and Homi Bhabha fill in the critics who sit beside him.

Names, groups and titles decoded

A short Yoruba glossary for the plays

Six traps, with the correct answer

1. “Achebe won the Nobel Prize.” Wrong. Soyinka (1986) is the first African laureate; Achebe never won it. The site’s Nobel question is built on exactly this.
2. “Home and Exile is a Soyinka memoir.” Wrong. It is Achebe’s. Soyinka’s memoirs include Aké, Ìsarà and You Must Set Forth at Dawn.
3. “Master Harold…and the Boys is Soyinka’s.” Wrong. It is by Athol Fugard of South Africa.
4. “Death and the King’s Horseman is mainly about colonial rule.” Wrong on Soyinka’s own terms. He calls the colonial factor a catalyst; the tragedy is Elesin’s failure to complete the ritual.
5. “Olunde kills Pilkings” or “Elesin completes the ritual.” Both wrong. Olunde dies in his father’s place; Elesin strangles himself in his cell afterwards.
6. “Soyinka coined Negritude.” Wrong. Césaire, Senghor and Damas are its founders. Soyinka is its most famous mocker (tigritude, 1962).

Self-test: five questions

Where to go next

Read Soyinka beside his matching partners: the Derek Walcott guide for the Caribbean plays and the 1992 Nobel, and the Toni Morrison guide for the 1993 laureate. If you are preparing for UP Assistant Professor, the Unit X New Literatures in English page covers The Lion and the Jewel with the other prescribed African and Caribbean texts. For prize questions, try the Nobel Prize in Literature quiz. Every guide is listed on the English literature authors A–Z page.

For a reliable record of his life and works, see Wole Soyinka’s biography on the Nobel Prize site.

FAQ

When did Wole Soyinka win the Nobel Prize?

In 1986. He was the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy described him as a writer who “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence”.

Which Soyinka play should I read first?

Death and the King’s Horseman (1975). It is the most taught and most asked of his plays. Then The Lion and the Jewel and A Dance of the Forests.

What did Soyinka say about Negritude?

At the 1962 Makerere conference he said a tiger does not proclaim its tigritude; it pounces. He meant that African writing should show its quality rather than announce its identity.

Is Wole Soyinka a novelist?

Mainly a playwright. He wrote three novels: The Interpreters (1965), Season of Anomy (1973) and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021).