Wole Soyinka
life that he so extensively appropriates.Madmen and Specialistsand from
Zia with Loveare particularly illustrative of this point. For in each of these
plays, the protagonist functions, unlike the protagonists of plays likeDeath
and the King’s Horseman,Dance of the ForestsandKongi’s Harvest, as a sort of
embodiment of that figure of medieval European folk festivals, Lord of
Misrule. Thus, whereDeath and the King’s Horsemanmore or less success-
fully fuses and harmonizes ritual with drama by integrating the words,
actions and gestures of Elesin Oba as the communicant of the communal
rite and as existential hero of the private drama of his vacillating, sub-
liminally divided will, Professor inThe Road, the Old Man inMadmen and
Specialists, Sebe Irawe inFrom Zia with Love, and Sanda inThe Beatification of
Area Boyall set in motion and orchestrate wild disruptions and inversions
of the protocols and practices of “polite” and official languages and id-
ioms of power, privilege or tradition. Moreover, within themselves, these
four plays differ so markedly that an element common to all the plays – a
sort of plebeian, Bakhtinian “grotesque realism” involving extensive car-
nivalesque jokes and conceits on bodily appetites and desires – connects
differently with other elements like music, dance and spectacle, ritual
and ceremonial performative idioms, and propulsive, plot-driven dra-
mas of individual destiny. And it is precisely on account of this extensive
internal differentiation in idiom and style, technique and performative
mode in Soyinka’s drama that in our concluding section of this chapter,
we now move to analyses of two particular plays from the “early” and
“late” periods of Soyinka’s career. These are respectivelyThe Lion and the
JewelandFrom Zia with Love.
The Lion and the Jeweloccupies a unique place in Soyinka’s dramas. It
is perhaps the only play by him that is written entirely in a comic spirit
uncomplicated by a dark, brooding humor or satire. True, it is a satirical
comedy, but the satire is of a gentle, good-natured kind. Most of the
satirical barbs are directed at Lakunle, the eccentric schoolteacher, and
people like him who propose a superficial, naive, and pretentious view of
progress, modernity and Westernization as a counter to what they con-
sider the unmodern backwardness of African village life. Thus, though
Lakunle finds his village compatriots insufferably ridiculous in their “un-
sophisticated” rural ways, the laugh is on him: we laughat, and not with
him; we laugh at the incongruity between his inflated self-importance
and the half-digested, pedantic nature of the “knowledge” he espouses,
and between his affectation of superiority and the utter condescension
with which everyone in the village, including even his own pupils, re-
gards his ineptitude and eccentricity. But compared with the dictators,