Artistic License In SoyinkaÐŽ¦S Death And The Kings Horseman

Natasha Z. Johnson

English 210

Professor Despres

1 April 2007

Artistic License in SoyinkaÐŽ¦s

Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman

The author of Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman, Wole Soyinka, has vehemently insisted that his play is one of metaphysics rather than one of politics. The insistence of postcolonial readers and critics that art cannot transcend history has led to Soyinka having to defend and explain his work in addition to trying to control the reception of his work. The colonial incident in Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman is incidental to the playÐŽ¦s literary importance and artistic meaning, because Soyinka could have used numerous other circumstances or events as a foundation for his play and the artistic meaning would have been the same.

Artists are allowed artistic license. The area of focus or subject of art is decided by the artist. Using historical events and changing the details to make a specific point is one of many ways in which authors use their artistic license. Soyinka admits in the authorÐŽ¦s notes for the play, Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman, that he took certain liberties with the historical event used as the backdrop of his play. He states:

The changes I have made are in matters of detail, sequence and of course characterisation. The action has also been set back two or three years to while the war was still on, for minor reasons of dramaturgy.

The factual account still exists in the archives of the British Colonial Administration. (3)

Therefore, after having read the authorÐŽ¦s notes, the reader of the play, regardless of his or her familiarity with the historical event Soyinka is referring to, is aware that artistic license has been taken with the telling of this event. We know that the authorÐŽ¦s intention was not to give us an accurate retelling of an historical event. He tells us so. He also makes the reader aware of the actuality that the factual details of the event are available to the reader through the British Colonial Administration. In other words, go look it up.

Consequently, Soyinka is not the only author to take artistic license with historical events. Shakespeare, Shaw and many others have done so; however, that is not the point. The point is that fiction, by its very nature, is not ÐŽ§truthЎЁ. Fiction, while it has its basis in truth, is merely the representation of ÐŽ§truth.ЎЁ Fiction is art; therefore, art is also a representation of ÐŽ§truthЎЁ as seen by the artist.

In SoyinkaÐŽ¦s essay titled, Elesin Oba and the Critics, he cites examples of other works in which artistic license was taken to produce art that transcends history.

The truly creative writer who is properly uninhibited by ideological winds, chooses and of course we can speculate on the sociological factors involved in this choice ad infinitum Ñ"{he chooses when to question accepted History Ñ"{A Dance of the Forest; when to appropriate Ritual for ideological statements Ñ"{The Bacchae of Euripedes and equally, when to ЎҐepochaliseÐŽ¦ History for its mythopoeic resourcefulness Ñ"{Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman. (173)

While it is true that Soyinka lists his own works, Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman and A Dance of the Forest, he makes a very clear argument for artistic license. For each work of art he lists, he also states how these pieces should be understood.

In so much as artistic meaning is decided by the artist, interpreting or criticizing art outside of the context in which it was intended, leads to confusion and contradictions in meaning. To criticize Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman with a Marxist perspective, as in Ideology and Tragedy by Biodun Jeyifo, one is led to the conclusion that SoyinkaÐŽ¦s play represents the indigenous people of Africa, by way of its main character, Elesin, who are at fault for their own will being changed or overtaken by the ruling people. Jeyifo writes:

The actions and fate of a protagonist hero assume an essentiality and representativeness both by virtue of his nature and the potentiality of symbolic reverberations carried by this goals and aspirations Ñ"{which of course are defeated in the course of the tragic action. In other words, both in his person and in the enterprise which he comes to assert and defend, a tragic hero of the kind we are discussing must embody the basic emotions and the collective will of a people. (168)

JeyifoÐŽ¦s assumptions of Elesin, as representation of the Yoruba people, are a contradiction of the playÐŽ¦s artistic meaning. Soyinka specifically warns against this type of thinking in his notes on the play. Jeyifo simply reduces the plays meaning to a clash between the two cultures in which the African people choose to surrender their will to colonialism. Jeyifo also states ÐŽ§ÐŽKSoyinka has suppressed the real, objective differences between conflicting groups and classes within the indigenous systemЎЁ (171). Thus proving that either he does not understand Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman, or he has chosen not to read the play from the perspective the author intended. Additionally, Jeyifo says of Death and the KingÐŽ¦s Horseman that, ÐŽ§The play presents a moment of negativity when the contradictions in our societies, at the level of psychic and spiritual disjuncture, are revealed and probedЎЁ (168). By his own