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A Dance of the Forests
This drama was first performed as part of the Nigerian Independence Celebrations.
89 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
12 people are currently reading
433 people want to read
About the author
Wole Soyinka
207 books1,239 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 2, 2023
A strange concoction of the rising dead, those with a guilty conscience, and those out for revenge, all orchestrated in a forest dance of course.
Some favourite lines:
“Anyway, the man is a fool. Is that not enough crime for Aroni?”
“Guards…Do eunuchs not fetch a good price at the market?”
The play had a cast of 40 characters squished into 80 odd pages, hence some confusion (although some had just a line or two). The crux of the play was trying to figure out who was the fourth person in the forest and their role. Made difficult by some characters masking themselves as other characters. I wasn’t intent on trying to follow it all precisely, I was there for the ride.
The coming-together-at-the-end scene was frenzied in a good way, but left some of my curiosities unanswered. I’m not good at being left hanging however it didn’t dim my enjoyment.
Set in Nigeria, but not part of my reading challenge as I have already read one set there. 3.5 stars rounded down.
Some favourite lines:
“Anyway, the man is a fool. Is that not enough crime for Aroni?”
“Guards…Do eunuchs not fetch a good price at the market?”
The play had a cast of 40 characters squished into 80 odd pages, hence some confusion (although some had just a line or two). The crux of the play was trying to figure out who was the fourth person in the forest and their role. Made difficult by some characters masking themselves as other characters. I wasn’t intent on trying to follow it all precisely, I was there for the ride.
The coming-together-at-the-end scene was frenzied in a good way, but left some of my curiosities unanswered. I’m not good at being left hanging however it didn’t dim my enjoyment.
Set in Nigeria, but not part of my reading challenge as I have already read one set there. 3.5 stars rounded down.
March 7, 2019
A Dance in the Forests is an ‘atmosphere’ play which makes it rather difficult to understand textually. And like the other two atmosphere plays I have reviewed
The Road
and
Madmen and Specialists
, it is also heavily based on Yoruba mythology. In addition, the play incorporates many characters, some of which have a dual role as one section of the play is set in the past, at the court of Mata Kharibu, with these said characters acting a previous incarnation of themselves. There is a sense of timelessness within the play, between the present and the past, and the ever-present Dead Man and Dead Woman throughout time. There is also a sense of the ethereal in the interplay between the living, the dead, and the demigods. Clearly, there is a lot happening in a short span.
As an atmosphere play, there is no discernable plot. We are left with the characters and their motives, not all of which are clear in this jumble of activity. Yet for all its non-typical attributes, there is much to admire in the setup and the traditions and the myths. I feel Soyinka was aiming for a surreal journey where time and space are nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. And I can certainly see this pulled off with the right stage and direction and, possibly, an immersive setup. The ritual dances, the masks, the sudden bursts of energy would all go a long way in making it a unique experience.
The mythology, as in many of Soyinka’s plays, centers around Ogun—the patron deity of poets and warriors, the god of creativeness and destructiveness. The play deals with the envy of a carver, Demoke, who is carving a giant silk-cotton tree into a totem for the festival of the gathering of the tribes in the forest; his fear of heights prevents him from reaching the top, however, Demoke’s apprentice, Oremole, climbs higher than he and in a fit of jealousy Demoke sends Oremole tumbling down to his death before lopping off the top of the tree. Demoke offends the deity Eshuoro of whom Oremole was a follower. So begins the rivalry between Ogun (Demoke’s deity) and Eshuoro, and the referee Forest Head.
The focus tends to shift though from Demoke and his crime, to the confrontation between Ogun and Eshuoro, and to the Dead Man and Dead Woman who have been wronged in Mata Kharibu’s court (a shift to the past that helps explain the history between the characters living and dead), all of which indicates a build up to a natural catharsis—redemption—which never transpires. Instead, the play culminates in Demoke being the pawn of the deities and the sorrow of the Dead Woman. The resolution is unclear.
I state once again that in performance, the atmosphere, fluidity of movement and action, would indeed part a certain, unique experience. Or as Osofian adequately sums it up:
References
Gibbs, J. Wole Soyinka (1986) Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Osofisan, F., ‘Wole Soyinka and a Living Dramatist’ published in Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal (1994) Heinemann Educational Publishers, pp.43-60
As an atmosphere play, there is no discernable plot. We are left with the characters and their motives, not all of which are clear in this jumble of activity. Yet for all its non-typical attributes, there is much to admire in the setup and the traditions and the myths. I feel Soyinka was aiming for a surreal journey where time and space are nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. And I can certainly see this pulled off with the right stage and direction and, possibly, an immersive setup. The ritual dances, the masks, the sudden bursts of energy would all go a long way in making it a unique experience.
Enter the beaters shouting. The flogger immediately breaks through them and sets out to clear a space with his long whip, which he freely exercises. The dancer follows almost at once, followed by his acolyte (a very intense young girl). She sprinkles the cleared space after the flogger. The dirge-man begins to recite within a few minutes of their entry. An assistant hands Agboreko the divination board, the bowl and kernels.]
Dirge-man: Move on eyah! Move apart
I felt the wind breathe—no more
Keep away now. Leave the dead
Some room to dance.
If you see the banana leaf
Freshly fibrous like a woman’s breasts
If you see the banana leaf
Shred itself, thread on thread
Hang wet as the crêpe of grief
Don’t say it’s the wind. Leave the dead
Some room to dance.
The mythology, as in many of Soyinka’s plays, centers around Ogun—the patron deity of poets and warriors, the god of creativeness and destructiveness. The play deals with the envy of a carver, Demoke, who is carving a giant silk-cotton tree into a totem for the festival of the gathering of the tribes in the forest; his fear of heights prevents him from reaching the top, however, Demoke’s apprentice, Oremole, climbs higher than he and in a fit of jealousy Demoke sends Oremole tumbling down to his death before lopping off the top of the tree. Demoke offends the deity Eshuoro of whom Oremole was a follower. So begins the rivalry between Ogun (Demoke’s deity) and Eshuoro, and the referee Forest Head.
Demoke: Envy, but not form prowess of his adze.
The world knew of Demoke, son and son to carvers;
Master of wood, shaper of iron, servant of Ogun,
Slave, alas, to height, and the tapered end
Of the silk cotton tree. Oremole
My bonded man, whetted the blades,
Lit the fires to forge Demoke’s tool.
(…)
And now he sat above my head, carving at the head
While I crouched below him, nibbling hairs
Off the chest of araba, king among the trees.
So far could I climb, one reach higher
And the world was beaten like an egg and I
Clasped the tree-hulk like a lover.
Thrice I said I’ll cut it down, thread it,
Stride it prostate, mould and master araba
Below the knee, shave and scrape him clean
On the head. But thrice Oremole, slave,
Server to Eshuoro laughed! ‘Let me anoint
The head, and do you, my master, trim the bulge
Of his great bottom.’ The squirrel who dances on
A broken branch, must watch whose jaws are open
Down below.
The focus tends to shift though from Demoke and his crime, to the confrontation between Ogun and Eshuoro, and to the Dead Man and Dead Woman who have been wronged in Mata Kharibu’s court (a shift to the past that helps explain the history between the characters living and dead), all of which indicates a build up to a natural catharsis—redemption—which never transpires. Instead, the play culminates in Demoke being the pawn of the deities and the sorrow of the Dead Woman. The resolution is unclear.
I state once again that in performance, the atmosphere, fluidity of movement and action, would indeed part a certain, unique experience. Or as Osofian adequately sums it up:
It was easy naturally to dissolve the fears of those who had only previously encountered the play in print, and concluded from their reading that the play was totally inaccessible. Even my cast began from such prejudices, until the play asserted its histrionic power, and surprised them with the richness of its theatrical possibilities. Soyinka is not made for reading, but for staging, for performance.
References
Gibbs, J. Wole Soyinka (1986) Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Osofisan, F., ‘Wole Soyinka and a Living Dramatist’ published in Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal (1994) Heinemann Educational Publishers, pp.43-60
February 16, 2013
I was introduced to Soyinka with relatively simple poems, and was so struck by them that venturing into a full-length play was the natural next step. Quite honestly, the first time I read this one, I understood nothing at all. I stubbornly refused to re-read what I'd already read, in the conviction that if I were watching the play, I would not be able to do that.
Watching a play as complex as this one would be a unique experience, though, totally unlike reading it. In the web of time that Soyinka weaves, watching the play would allow us to associate the same faces with characters in different times - which finally convinced me to go back to parts when I did not quite understand something!
The second reading was thus for me like unravelling a ball of wool. It was mind-opening to understand how wonderfully the play is layered, while accepting that in all likelihood, I still have not understood it very well! I was astounded by its complexity and the courage of a writer who could stage something like this as part of the independence day celebrations!
Watching a play as complex as this one would be a unique experience, though, totally unlike reading it. In the web of time that Soyinka weaves, watching the play would allow us to associate the same faces with characters in different times - which finally convinced me to go back to parts when I did not quite understand something!
The second reading was thus for me like unravelling a ball of wool. It was mind-opening to understand how wonderfully the play is layered, while accepting that in all likelihood, I still have not understood it very well! I was astounded by its complexity and the courage of a writer who could stage something like this as part of the independence day celebrations!
December 21, 2015
What an incredibly complex and divine play! I had to read it at least thrice before matters became clear to me. Soyinka delves into so many directions, traditions and forms as to boggle the senses. And what's more is the astonishing degree to which I can relate my country's events with Nigeria's post-independence struggle. But then this play lifts up from the day in whose commemoration/critique it was written. (His tongue-in-cheek national concern reminds me somewhat of Anwar Maqsood.)By involving the Yoruba mythology, Soyinka extends the framework to encompass the cosmos to include and mingle the four realms of the living, the ancestors, the un-dead and the godly entities; connected by a strange chthonic void.
February 22, 2023
Soyinka's A Dance Of The Forest is modelled on New Year Festival.Soyinka reveals the rotten aspects of the society and demonstrates that the past is no better than the present when it comes to the seamy side of life.Soyinka warns if people do not remain alert,history will repeat itself & people would repeat their mistakes.
May 14, 2025
Too many metaphors happening in the course of a mere 89 pages but it was so beautifully written that I couldn't help being enamoured by it. That being said, I gotta read some analyses of this play to understand it more fully.
May 19, 2022
A Dance of the Forests was commissioned as part of Nigeria’s Independence Celebrations in 1960. In this play Soyinka warns the recently sovereign Nigerians that the end of colonial rule does not mean an end to their country’s troubles.
Through the ‘play within the play’ style Soyinka cautions the people that if they were to replicate their blunders of the past, it would ultimately prove disadvantageous to the progress of the country.
He emphasizes the fact that it would do good for the Nigerians to learn lessons from the past and take care not to repeat those heinous and grievous crimes and mistakes and give up on human values and the inherent goodness of man.
A Dance of the Forests is a most multifaceted satirical play. In a play offered to the nation on the exhilarated occasion of its independence, the immediate victim of the satire is the nation itself.
In a play ostensibly celebrating a country’s birth, the talk is all of death, delusion and betrayal. Indeed, flying in the face of all the cherished teachings of negritude, Soyinka has chosen to deromanticise his people and they history with bravado, barely paralleled since the days of Synge and O’Casey.
Int this play, a whole nation is under attack. The play is a conflict between the living and the dead, between history and reality. Soyinka’s frame of reference, in keeping with his vision, is nothing less than the past, present, and ongoing stream of human existence. There is to be, then, a great gathering of the tribes at a momentous time in their history.
It is a fitting occasion for the nation to show its medals and revivify its trophies—a time to evoke historic heroism of the sort that will provide inspiration for future endeavour.
“The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating,” declares Council Orator Adenebi.
But Soyinka possesses the satirist’s fervent almost pathological fascination for the truth. Those heady with the enthusiasm of the present must be bullied into setting their experience within the framework of historical past; they must be allowed to foretaste some of the abiding truths of human condition.
Those who stand in the present and drug themselves with memories of former glories like Orator Adenebi, whose ridiculous musings spiral ever further away from realism, must be faced with the forbidding reality behind their dreams.
The living, then, are anxious to call up from the dead a host of mighty heroes, celebrate the gathering of the tribes with a vision of past splendour; and in an vacant clearing in the forest, the soil breaks and there arise from the dead two wretched human figures— a sorry link “for the season of rejoicing”.
The Dead Man has behind him a wretched history of misery, thwarted hopes and betrayal; the Dead Woman, his wife, sorrowful and pregnant “for a hundred generations”, has an evenly despondent past, and is soon to be delivered of a half-child, her baby who symbolizes the future.
Soyinka allows us to see the details of their past in a Faustian recreation of the Court of Mata Kharibu, a mytical twelfth-century king who represents the “glorious” history to which the living look back with mostalgia. Soyinka’s purpose here is clear, for, as he observes elsewhere, the past “clarifies the present and explains the future”.
As Soyinka sees it, Africa’s past is a miserably shameful one. Thus, here in the shrine of historical brilliance, in this reign to which living Africans look back with pride, we find a whore as queen, and a king unrivalled in barbaric ferocity—a king who will brook no resistance to his every impulse, who fears, like all tyrants, the self-governing mind, and will sell into slavery his most devoted subjects.
The Dead Man is one of them, sold for a cask of rum because he dared to think for himself and suggest that he and the king’s warriors should only go to war for a just cause.
A figure of mutating significance, the Dead Man here is representative of the ordinary, thinking reasonable mankind.
The Dead Man’s history also includes involvement with the slave-trade, Africa’s most traumatic historical experience. Soyinka gives his audience the brutal truth that the Kharibus of Africa’s past had as much blood on their hands as the white slavers.
At this point in a play notable for its Janus-like viewpoint, we begin to find Africa’s ignominious pat pointing a finger towards the present and the future. There is a tough hint that Africa too simply accepts its chains, be they inflicted by strangers or brothers.
More startling, however, is the obvious insinuation that the chains are, and have always been, an enduring attribute of the landscape.
The “new” ship in which Mata Kharibu and all his ancestors will be proud to ride suggests modern forms of slavery that the author’s fellow Africans are blindly accepting. It is as though Soyinka sees the whole of African history in the crushingly powerful image of a great slave galley sailing down the straits of time, from the dim past to the present and on towards the horizon of the future.
And what of the present?
“The pattern is unchanged,” says the Dead Man, who was “one of those who journeyed in the marketships of blood”, and who is now visiting the modern world of the living. It is a lesson in disillusionment, for, as he is at one point reminded … Your wise men, casting bones of oracle Promised peace and profit New knowledge, new beginnings after toil... Treated abominably in the past, he and his wife are abominably treated in the present.
The bearers of bitter truth about an inglorious history, they are given at the gathering of the tribes the cold welcome of beggars at a feast. It is a measure of the subtlety of Soyinka’ s art that the satire here works on two levels; for the shocking treatment of guests, and, furthermore, guests from the dead, is immediately recognized as a flagrant violation of rules of conducUP0n which African societies pride themselves.
At a more profound level, we are meant to witness in this behaviour not only a wilful blindness to the truth of the past, but also an arrogant rejection of that past as it is enshrined in the two representative figures of the Dead Pair.
The experience of the Dead Man and his wife is comprehensible enough. It is a case of plus change. Men treated each other awfully in the past, they treat each other horrendously in the present; they will treat each other inexcusably in the future.
Such, then, is Soyinka’s message for the contented occasion of Nigeria’s Independence Celebrations—a sobering souvenir of some basic, and abiding, truths about mankind in general and about Africans and their history in particular.
Events since 1960 have proved with a retaliation the accurateness of that part of his vision which dealt with the future.
But in addition, A Dance of the Forests supplies proof, if poor is needed, that Soyinka saw the need for self-criticism before Achehe raised the subject as a matter of urgency in the pages of Presence Africaine.
Soyinka’s satiric vision is an inquisitive affair—partly Swift’s savage resentment, partly the Couradian “horror”, and partly the Wordsworthian lament over “what man has made of man”.
It informs every part of this complicated but incredible play.
The play attracted a deluge of criticism from the elite of Soyinka’s native Nigeria. Politicians were particularly incensed at Soyinka’s representation of post-colonial politics as purposeless and crooked.
But it has been conceded that the play champions an inimitable vision of a new Africa, one that is able to create an innovative identity, free from the influence of European imperialism.
Although he can depict West African life in loving detail, Soyinka is an unflinchingly honest observer of his land and people. It is through his satirical portrayal of the past that he warns his countrymen not to live in nostalgia for Africa’s past glories and overlook imperative dilemmas of the present day.
A classic. An ageless classic by a master.
Through the ‘play within the play’ style Soyinka cautions the people that if they were to replicate their blunders of the past, it would ultimately prove disadvantageous to the progress of the country.
He emphasizes the fact that it would do good for the Nigerians to learn lessons from the past and take care not to repeat those heinous and grievous crimes and mistakes and give up on human values and the inherent goodness of man.
A Dance of the Forests is a most multifaceted satirical play. In a play offered to the nation on the exhilarated occasion of its independence, the immediate victim of the satire is the nation itself.
In a play ostensibly celebrating a country’s birth, the talk is all of death, delusion and betrayal. Indeed, flying in the face of all the cherished teachings of negritude, Soyinka has chosen to deromanticise his people and they history with bravado, barely paralleled since the days of Synge and O’Casey.
Int this play, a whole nation is under attack. The play is a conflict between the living and the dead, between history and reality. Soyinka’s frame of reference, in keeping with his vision, is nothing less than the past, present, and ongoing stream of human existence. There is to be, then, a great gathering of the tribes at a momentous time in their history.
It is a fitting occasion for the nation to show its medals and revivify its trophies—a time to evoke historic heroism of the sort that will provide inspiration for future endeavour.
“The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating,” declares Council Orator Adenebi.
But Soyinka possesses the satirist’s fervent almost pathological fascination for the truth. Those heady with the enthusiasm of the present must be bullied into setting their experience within the framework of historical past; they must be allowed to foretaste some of the abiding truths of human condition.
Those who stand in the present and drug themselves with memories of former glories like Orator Adenebi, whose ridiculous musings spiral ever further away from realism, must be faced with the forbidding reality behind their dreams.
The living, then, are anxious to call up from the dead a host of mighty heroes, celebrate the gathering of the tribes with a vision of past splendour; and in an vacant clearing in the forest, the soil breaks and there arise from the dead two wretched human figures— a sorry link “for the season of rejoicing”.
The Dead Man has behind him a wretched history of misery, thwarted hopes and betrayal; the Dead Woman, his wife, sorrowful and pregnant “for a hundred generations”, has an evenly despondent past, and is soon to be delivered of a half-child, her baby who symbolizes the future.
Soyinka allows us to see the details of their past in a Faustian recreation of the Court of Mata Kharibu, a mytical twelfth-century king who represents the “glorious” history to which the living look back with mostalgia. Soyinka’s purpose here is clear, for, as he observes elsewhere, the past “clarifies the present and explains the future”.
As Soyinka sees it, Africa’s past is a miserably shameful one. Thus, here in the shrine of historical brilliance, in this reign to which living Africans look back with pride, we find a whore as queen, and a king unrivalled in barbaric ferocity—a king who will brook no resistance to his every impulse, who fears, like all tyrants, the self-governing mind, and will sell into slavery his most devoted subjects.
The Dead Man is one of them, sold for a cask of rum because he dared to think for himself and suggest that he and the king’s warriors should only go to war for a just cause.
A figure of mutating significance, the Dead Man here is representative of the ordinary, thinking reasonable mankind.
The Dead Man’s history also includes involvement with the slave-trade, Africa’s most traumatic historical experience. Soyinka gives his audience the brutal truth that the Kharibus of Africa’s past had as much blood on their hands as the white slavers.
At this point in a play notable for its Janus-like viewpoint, we begin to find Africa’s ignominious pat pointing a finger towards the present and the future. There is a tough hint that Africa too simply accepts its chains, be they inflicted by strangers or brothers.
More startling, however, is the obvious insinuation that the chains are, and have always been, an enduring attribute of the landscape.
The “new” ship in which Mata Kharibu and all his ancestors will be proud to ride suggests modern forms of slavery that the author’s fellow Africans are blindly accepting. It is as though Soyinka sees the whole of African history in the crushingly powerful image of a great slave galley sailing down the straits of time, from the dim past to the present and on towards the horizon of the future.
And what of the present?
“The pattern is unchanged,” says the Dead Man, who was “one of those who journeyed in the marketships of blood”, and who is now visiting the modern world of the living. It is a lesson in disillusionment, for, as he is at one point reminded … Your wise men, casting bones of oracle Promised peace and profit New knowledge, new beginnings after toil... Treated abominably in the past, he and his wife are abominably treated in the present.
The bearers of bitter truth about an inglorious history, they are given at the gathering of the tribes the cold welcome of beggars at a feast. It is a measure of the subtlety of Soyinka’ s art that the satire here works on two levels; for the shocking treatment of guests, and, furthermore, guests from the dead, is immediately recognized as a flagrant violation of rules of conducUP0n which African societies pride themselves.
At a more profound level, we are meant to witness in this behaviour not only a wilful blindness to the truth of the past, but also an arrogant rejection of that past as it is enshrined in the two representative figures of the Dead Pair.
The experience of the Dead Man and his wife is comprehensible enough. It is a case of plus change. Men treated each other awfully in the past, they treat each other horrendously in the present; they will treat each other inexcusably in the future.
Such, then, is Soyinka’s message for the contented occasion of Nigeria’s Independence Celebrations—a sobering souvenir of some basic, and abiding, truths about mankind in general and about Africans and their history in particular.
Events since 1960 have proved with a retaliation the accurateness of that part of his vision which dealt with the future.
But in addition, A Dance of the Forests supplies proof, if poor is needed, that Soyinka saw the need for self-criticism before Achehe raised the subject as a matter of urgency in the pages of Presence Africaine.
Soyinka’s satiric vision is an inquisitive affair—partly Swift’s savage resentment, partly the Couradian “horror”, and partly the Wordsworthian lament over “what man has made of man”.
It informs every part of this complicated but incredible play.
The play attracted a deluge of criticism from the elite of Soyinka’s native Nigeria. Politicians were particularly incensed at Soyinka’s representation of post-colonial politics as purposeless and crooked.
But it has been conceded that the play champions an inimitable vision of a new Africa, one that is able to create an innovative identity, free from the influence of European imperialism.
Although he can depict West African life in loving detail, Soyinka is an unflinchingly honest observer of his land and people. It is through his satirical portrayal of the past that he warns his countrymen not to live in nostalgia for Africa’s past glories and overlook imperative dilemmas of the present day.
A classic. An ageless classic by a master.
July 31, 2022
This is the second play by Soyinka that I have read, and as with The Lion and the Jewel I loved the complexity and dynamism of the story here. In The Lion and the Jewel, there were a number of great reversals of fortune and trickery among the characters. Here, instead, the human characters had surprising backstories and ancestral histories, and the spirit characters were forever concealing and changing their identities, especially in the last section with Eshuoro !
I found characters mostly likable and engaging, moreso than in The Lion and the Jewel. Rola in particular was really entertaining.
All of this said, I definitely feel like I reach the end of A Dance of the Forests and have a very limited idea of what the play's meaning is! I am lacking so much cultural context that I can only begin to interpret it. I certainly understand that the conversation among the four human characters about how unpleasant it is to have all of the visitors for the Gathering, that this is the starting place of showing the ungratefulness of the present generation for the heritage of their ancestors, that Soyinka is showing us the value of respecting history, of honoring the traditions of our ancestors and being generous with the community.
But beyond this general idea, there are many points on which I feel unsure. What is Soyinka's final judgement regarding the dead man? From my perspective, the dead man was standing up for his conscience when he disobeyed Mata Kharibu's order, but that idea never found voice in the play, so I'm not sure if Soyinka actually condemns the dead man for his disobedience or not. Similarly, what is the final judgement on Demoke and Rola? The intricate dance of the final scene that is described with such obviously symbolic elements I simply don't have the cultural knowledge to interpret. I am wondering if Eshuoro, Ogun, as well as some of these minor apparitions like the Spirit of Volcanoes or the ant community, if these are part of traditional mythology that a Nigerian audience would already be familiar with.
I'm considering studying this play with my English literature class, but before I could do that I would need to do significant cultural research in order to be able to do the play justice.
I found characters mostly likable and engaging, moreso than in The Lion and the Jewel. Rola in particular was really entertaining.
All of this said, I definitely feel like I reach the end of A Dance of the Forests and have a very limited idea of what the play's meaning is! I am lacking so much cultural context that I can only begin to interpret it. I certainly understand that the conversation among the four human characters about how unpleasant it is to have all of the visitors for the Gathering, that this is the starting place of showing the ungratefulness of the present generation for the heritage of their ancestors, that Soyinka is showing us the value of respecting history, of honoring the traditions of our ancestors and being generous with the community.
But beyond this general idea, there are many points on which I feel unsure. What is Soyinka's final judgement regarding the dead man? From my perspective, the dead man was standing up for his conscience when he disobeyed Mata Kharibu's order, but that idea never found voice in the play, so I'm not sure if Soyinka actually condemns the dead man for his disobedience or not. Similarly, what is the final judgement on Demoke and Rola? The intricate dance of the final scene that is described with such obviously symbolic elements I simply don't have the cultural knowledge to interpret. I am wondering if Eshuoro, Ogun, as well as some of these minor apparitions like the Spirit of Volcanoes or the ant community, if these are part of traditional mythology that a Nigerian audience would already be familiar with.
I'm considering studying this play with my English literature class, but before I could do that I would need to do significant cultural research in order to be able to do the play justice.
April 2, 2024
So difficult. I tried to read and understand this novel to write a critical analysis on it. I do not remember anything I wrote. This was a very difficult play. Important, but I am not sure I was clever enough to discover all of its meaning. Very play within a play and because of that fact, it did feel Shakespearean, except it was not about theatrics at all, so very unShakespearean. What was it about? No idea. Dead people. gods. A truck? Environment? The disorientating experience of being thrown into a culture/ritual you know nothing about?
May 22, 2024
Não entendi nada boa parte do tempo - e não de um jeito bom, no geral. De outro lado, na outra peça dele que eu li, Death and the King's Horseman, as partes mais enigmáticas me parecem funcionar realmente bem. De outro outro lado, também fiquei com a impressão, relativamente forte, de que a culpa de não entender podia ser menos do texto do que minha - e, nesse sentido, a nota pouco entusiasmada se aplica mais ao meu desempenho chocho de leitura do que à peça em si.
July 15, 2018
The presentation of Yoruba worldview to the non-Yoruba is a very significant benefit of reading this book. We get the picture of the African socio-religio structure with a sharp political irony. The political irony is really important to understand the post-colonial picture of independent Nigeria.
Soyinka, is one of the best African writers. Reading him, thus, is significant.
Soyinka, is one of the best African writers. Reading him, thus, is significant.
Read
October 8, 2020Idk?
An obscure play if there was one. I don't think I can judge it by just reading it once because I did not understand it at all. And I doubt if I will read it again. So... off it goes in limbo.
An obscure play if there was one. I don't think I can judge it by just reading it once because I did not understand it at all. And I doubt if I will read it again. So... off it goes in limbo.
October 17, 2022
*3.5 stars
My original rating was actually 3 stars because half of it made zero sense to me, but I reread parts of it (not enough to count as a full reread) before my exams in August and it was actually rather good, so!
My original rating was actually 3 stars because half of it made zero sense to me, but I reread parts of it (not enough to count as a full reread) before my exams in August and it was actually rather good, so!
May 2, 2018
Very poetic and symbolic. It is something more to be felt than understood. Reminded me of Greek tragedies.
August 3, 2018
"Leave the dead some room to dance"
Want to read
December 26, 2019I want to read it
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 12, 2021
Complicated , in short. But great amalgamation of myth and history.
August 29, 2021
just brilliant... the play challenges the capitalist ideas of time and space, and connects us with ancestral thought: communion with nature and the world beyond, my kind of book... x
September 14, 2021
It's a great book
August 23, 2024
(read for school)
February 11, 2023
convoluted
March 4, 2016
Loved it. The Culture, the Story, the discription... All of it
December 25, 2022
A very dense play, but one of Soyinka's finest works.
Read
December 23, 2023A Harmattan Night's Dream
December 29, 2017
pair with zahrah the windseeker for wild forest, forest alive, spirits, tradition, mythology.
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