Wole Soyinka
a pervasive but logical confirmation of the Old Man’s deeply disturbing,
sardonic insights.
There are of course important differences betweenDeath and the King’s
HorsemanandThe Bacchae of Euripidesin their dramatization of the “sac-
rificial crisis.” And I do not mean by this the mere fact that Elesin Oba
is a far more willing ritual “victim” than Pentheus. After all, Pentheus
subliminally lusts for the emotional release available in the experience
of ritual and he goes to his sacrificial fate like one going to taste the for-
bidden fruits of emotional ecstasy. The main difference between the two
plays on this point lies in the far more important fact that even as Elesin
readies himself for his ritual suicide, he mobilizes and orchestrates other
festive idioms which will paradoxically subvert the ritual suicide and un-
intendedly work to keep him bound to this side of the passage between
life and death, between the world of the living and that of the dead.
By contrast, from first to last, Pentheus remains a novitiate ignorant of
the sacrificial codes of his communicant role, even after he is dressed in
drag in the vestments of female Bacchantes. We have to be as precise as
possible on this issue. First, we are given some crucial details of Elesin’s
personality: “He is a man of enormous vitality, speaks, dances and sings
with that infectious enjoyment of life which accompanies all his actions.”
() These details are important not only because they show Elesin’s im-
peccable qualification for his ritual function as a willing scapegoat, but
also because they reveal an excess which strains against that very ritual
obligation for it isnota necessary part of his qualification for the role
of ritual mediator between the world of the living and that of the de-
parted to be simultaneously aspeaker,singeranddancerof tales, if we may
be allowed to signify on Albert Lord’s famous monograph,The Singer of
Tales.
And what tales Elesin speaks, sings and dances! In all of contempo-
rary African drama in English, there is probably no scene requiring
from an actor the challenge of a simultaneity of acting, chanting and
dancing as we have in Elesin’s narration of the allegory of the Not-I
bird in the first scene of the play. Soyinka’s stage direction for the vir-
tuosic performance expected of Elesin in this scene makes this point
explicitly:
Elesin executes a brief, half-taunting dance. The drummer moves in and draws
a rhythm out of his steps. Elesin dances towards the market place as he chants his
story of the Not-I bird, his voice changing dexterously to mimic his characters.
He performs like a born raconteur infecting his retinue with his humor and
energy. (DKH,)