The “drama of existence”: sources and scope such large doses of genre-bending features that their staging as straight-
forwardly conventional slice-of-life dialogue-drama would be totally out
of order. Thus, a neat division of Soyinka’s plays into realist and non-
realist groupings is neither possible nor necessary. Indeed, one of the
most remarkable features of Soyinka’s drama is the degree to which he
is able to create powerfully rendered character, language and action in
either mode, realist or anti-realist.
Beside chronology, two approaches which have been applied to extrap-
olating intelligible patterns of differentiation in Soyinka’s large dramatic
corpus are the approach informed by thematic emphases, and that which
is structured by attentiveness to the theoretical and practical interest of
the Nigerian playwright in the interface between drama and ritual. This
latter approach is perhaps the most widely distributed area of critical
and theoretical interest in Soyinka’s drama in recent times; it is also, as
we shall argue, the most problematic. For this reason, we shall come to
a comprehensive engagement of that approach in a separate chapter on
Soyinka’s most ambitious dramatic creations.
The thematic approach has been the favored methodology of schol-
ars and critics more interested in Soyinka as a writer than as a theatre
artist, the prime examples being Eldred Jones, Gerald Moore and Adrian
Roscoe.These scholars and critics have thus tended to group the dra-
mas according to themes, subject matter and recurrent motifs. Since
such scholars and critics were at one time clearly in the majority among
students and enthusiasts of Soyinka’s works – at least for the first two
decades of the playwright’s career – this approach has dominated others
in the explication of Soyinka’s plays. In the perspective of this particular
approach, Soyinka’s dramatic corpus reveal that certain themes, ideas
and clusters of motifs recur throughout his plays. For instance, in the light
of Soyinka’s abiding interest inpower, in its ineluctable, “epiphenomenal”
aspects as well as its institutional, material effects and ramifications, we
are enabled to see a grouping of plays from all the periods of his career
which we might designate “Power Plays.” The outstanding, full-blown
examples of this category of plays in Soyinka’s dramatic corpus areKongi’s
Harvest(),Opera Wonyosi(),APlayofGiants() andFrom Zia
with Love(). There are also partial or fragmentary dramatic explo-
rations of this theme in plays such asDance of the Forests(),Madmen and
Specialists() and TheBacchae of Euripides(). And if corruption of
power and reactionary violence constitute a common point of thematic
focus in these “power plays,” they do differ considerably in their under-
lying conception of dramatic action, theatrical technique, andtoneand