Collected Plays
2 total works
`The Lion and the Jewel alone is enough to establish Nigeria as the most fertile new source of English-speaking drama since Synge's discovery of the Western Isles.' The Times
The ironic development and consequences of `progress' may be traced through both the themes and the tone of the works included in this second volume of Wole Soyinka's plays. The Lion and the Jewel shows an ineffectual assault on past tradition soundly defeated. In Kongi's Harvest, however, the pretensions of Kongi's regime are also fatal. The denouement points the way forward. The two Brother Jero plays pursue that way, the comic `propheteering' of the earlier play giving way to the sardonic reality of Jero's Metamorphosis. Madmen and Specialists, Soyinka's most pessimistic play, concerns the physical, mental, and moral destruction of modern civil war.
The ironic development and consequences of `progress' may be traced through both the themes and the tone of the works included in this second volume of Wole Soyinka's plays. The Lion and the Jewel shows an ineffectual assault on past tradition soundly defeated. In Kongi's Harvest, however, the pretensions of Kongi's regime are also fatal. The denouement points the way forward. The two Brother Jero plays pursue that way, the comic `propheteering' of the earlier play giving way to the sardonic reality of Jero's Metamorphosis. Madmen and Specialists, Soyinka's most pessimistic play, concerns the physical, mental, and moral destruction of modern civil war.
The Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka has been hailed as `one of the finest poetic playwrights who have ever written in English' (Martin Esslin) and `a writer of genius' (Irish Times).
The five plays in this collection are linked by their concern with the spiritual and the social, with belief and ritual as integrating forces for social cohesion. A Dance of the Forests (1960), a confrontation between the living and the dead, between history and reality; The Swamp Dwellers (1961), a tale of perilous dependence on the favour of the gods; The Strong Breed (1963), a play of expiation, all take place in Africa. So also does The Road (1965), `a rich and beautiful tragedy' (Times Literary Supplement)
The most recent work, an adaptation of The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), remains set in and around the Thebes of ancient Greece, but draws deeply on Africa and the themes of the earlier plays in this book. In all these plays - whether concerned with the corruption of urban life or the power of superstition - Soyinka's language and imagination transcend the plays' immediate social contexts.
The five plays in this collection are linked by their concern with the spiritual and the social, with belief and ritual as integrating forces for social cohesion. A Dance of the Forests (1960), a confrontation between the living and the dead, between history and reality; The Swamp Dwellers (1961), a tale of perilous dependence on the favour of the gods; The Strong Breed (1963), a play of expiation, all take place in Africa. So also does The Road (1965), `a rich and beautiful tragedy' (Times Literary Supplement)
The most recent work, an adaptation of The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), remains set in and around the Thebes of ancient Greece, but draws deeply on Africa and the themes of the earlier plays in this book. In all these plays - whether concerned with the corruption of urban life or the power of superstition - Soyinka's language and imagination transcend the plays' immediate social contexts.