This play, titled "The Last Breath of the Sun," adopts the structural and thematic hallmarks of Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman: the collision between metaphysical duty and colonial logic, the ritualistic use of language, and the "Tragic Flaw" found in the delay of a sacred transition.
THE LAST BREATH OF THE SUN
CHARACTERS:
OBAFEMI: The Elesin (Horseman) to the recently deceased King. A man of immense vitality.
ADEBISI: His son, recently returned from studying Law in London.
DISTRICT COMMISSIONER WATKINS: A rigid British administrator.
SARAH WATKINS: His wife, fascinated by "native curiosities."
THE IYALOJA: "Mother" of the market; the voice of the community’s conscience.
PRAISE-SINGER: The metaphysical guide for Obafemi’s journey.
SCENE ONE: THE PASSAGE THROUGH THE MARKET
(The marketplace is vibrant, but an undercurrent of solemnity persists. OBAFEMI enters, dressed in rich, flowing robes. He is followed by the PRAISE-SINGER and a chorus of drummers. He moves with a dance that is both a celebration of life and a preparation for death.)
PRAISE-SINGER:
The sun has dipped its head below the rim of the world, Obafemi. The King has been wandering the dark corridors for thirty days. He calls for his horseman. Does the horseman still have strength in his legs?
OBAFEMI:
(Laughing, a deep, resonant sound)
Does the stallion ask if the earth is firm? My legs are rooted in the history of our blood. I have eaten the world’s sweetness, and now, I am the honey that will sweeten the King’s journey.
IYALOJA:
(Stepping forward)
It is a heavy burden, Obafemi. The world you leave is full of noise. The white man builds his stone houses and speaks into wires. Do not let the scent of their cooked meats distract your nose from the scent of the ancestors.
OBAFEMI:
(Boastfully)
I am the voyager! I have seen the white man’s wonders, and they are but toys of the mind. My soul belongs to the transition. Tonight, when the moon reaches the navel of the sky, I shall become a breath, and then, a memory.
(The drumming intensifies. Obafemi begins a trance-dance. He demands one final indulgence—to marry a young virgin of the market, asserting that his seed must be planted one last time before the harvest of his soul. The Iyaloja hesitates but relents, fearing to disturb the ritual’s harmony.)
SCENE TWO: THE BUNGALOW OF THE LAW
(The scene shifts to the colonial residency. Western classical music plays on a gramophone. DISTRICT COMMISSIONER WATKINS is reviewing reports. SARAH is dressing for a masquerade ball.)
WATKINS:
It’s barbaric, Sarah. This fellow, the King’s Horseman, intends to simply "will" himself to death tonight. It’s an administrative nightmare. If I let a man commit ritual suicide under my jurisdiction, the Governor will have my head.
SARAH:
But darling, isn't it poetic? A final devotion?
WATKINS:
It’s a breach of the King’s Peace. We brought the Law to these forests to stop this nonsense. Sergeant!
SERGEANT (Offstage):
Yes, Sah!
WATKINS:
Prepare the escort. We go to the market. I don’t care if it’s "sacred." In this territory, the only sacred thing is the British Penal Code.
SCENE THREE: THE COLLISION
(The ritual is at its peak. OBAFEMI is in a deep trance, the transition is beginning. The air is thick with the scent of incense and the rhythm of the "Great Transition" drums. Suddenly, the sound of heavy boots and a whistle shatters the atmosphere. WATKINS and his men burst in.)
WATKINS:
Stop this! In the name of His Majesty, I command this assembly to disperse!
IYALOJA:
(With icy calm)
You speak of a King across the water. We speak of the King who travels the stars. Stand back, white man. You are treading on a bridge you cannot see.
WATKINS:
(To Obafemi)
You, man! Stand up. You’re coming with us for "protection."
OBAFEMI:
(Struggling to return from the trance)
The... the path... it was closing... Why have you pulled me back from the gate?
(Obafemi is arrested. The ritual is broken. The community gasps in horror—the King is now stranded in the void, and the Horseman is "shamed" by his survival.)
SCENE FOUR: THE PRICE OF DELAY
(A prison cell. ADEBISI, the son, enters. He is dressed in a European suit but carries a look of ancient grief.)
ADEBISI:
I came back to bury a hero, Father. I find instead a man who eats the King’s bread while the King wanders in the cold.
OBAFEMI:
They stopped me, Adebisi! The iron of their laws clamped onto my wrists!
ADEBISI:
No. The iron only touched your wrists because your heart lingered too long in the marketplace. You dallied with a new bride while the abyss waited. You gave the white man the gap he needed to strike.
OBAFEMI:
I will finish it now! I will die here!
ADEBISI:
It is too late. The rhythm is broken. The universe does not wait for a man who trips on his own ego.
SCENE FIVE: THE FINAL SACRIFICE
(The market square. The mood is funereal. IYALOJA enters, leading a procession. They carry a body covered in white cloth. WATKINS enters, looking smug, believing he has "saved" a life.)
WATKINS:
See? No one had to die today. Reason has prevailed.
IYALOJA:
(Pointing to the body)
Reason has a bitter taste, Commissioner. Since the father could not find the way, the son has cleared the path.
(They uncover the body. It is ADEBISI. He has taken his own life to fulfill the debt of the bloodline and guide the King.)
OBAFEMI:
(Howling in agony)
My son! My seed has outpaced the sower!
IYALOJA:
(To Watkins)
You thought you brought life, but you brought a confusion that only blood could settle. (To Obafemi) And you, Horseman, you are now a ghost among the living. The sun has set, and you are left in the gray.
(OBAFEMI, in a final act of desperation and reclamation, uses his own shackles to strangle himself before the guards can move. He falls beside his son.)
IYALOJA:
(Softly, as the drums begin a low, mourning thrum)
Now, at last, the heavy silence. The world is off its axis, but the debt is paid. Let the white man go back to his maps. He has seen a country he will never understand.
[BLACKOUT]
To continue and deepen the originality, let’s move into a Scene Six, where we shift away from the physical death and focus on the metaphysical fallout. In Soyinka’s style, this usually involves a "clash of worlds" where the colonizer realizes they have broken something they cannot fix.
SCENE SIX: THE WEIGHT OF EMPTY SPACE
(The Residency Veranda. Late night. The bodies have been cleared, but the drumming from the village has changed—it is no longer a heartbeat, but a jagged, irregular scratching sound. WATKINS sits with a glass of brandy. SARAH stands by the railing, looking into the darkness.)
SARAH:
Do you hear it, Arthur? The silence between the drumbeats? It feels... heavy. Like the air is waiting for an apology.
WATKINS:
(Snapping)
It’s just exhaustion, Sarah. The boy was a fanatic. We gave him an education in London, for God’s sake. He should have known better than to throw his life away for a superstition his father wasn't even brave enough to finish.
SARAH:
But that’s just it. He didn’t die for the superstition. He died because you moved the goalposts. You saved the father and created a vacuum. Nature hates a vacuum, Arthur. Especially a spiritual one.
WATKINS:
(Bolting upright)
Who’s there? I told the guards no more "delegations" tonight!
WATKINS:
What do you want? The tragedy is over.
IYALOJA:
Over? You think a river stops flowing because you build a wall? The water only rises until it drowns the builder. I have brought you a gift.
(She sets the pot on the pristine white table.)
IYALOJA:
The ashes of a bridge. Your Law is a straight line, white man. It goes from point A to point B. But our world is a circle. When you broke the circle, you didn't just stop a death. You stopped a birth. The King is stuck. The Horseman is shamed. And the son... the son is a sacrifice to a god of "Order" that doesn't exist here.
WATKINS:
(Quietly)
I did my duty.
IYALOJA:
Duty is a suit you put on in the morning. Truth is the skin underneath. Look at your hands, Commissioner. You didn't spill blood with a sword. You spilled it with a pen and a whistle. That is the coldest kind of murder.
SARAH:
(To the Iyaloja)
What happens now? To the people?
(She turns to leave, then pauses.)
IYALOJA:
Sleep well, Commissioner. But listen closely to the wind. It is the only thing left that still speaks the old language.
(She vanishes into the shadows. WATKINS reaches for his brandy, but his hand shakes, and the glass shatters on the stone floor. The jagged drumming in the distance suddenly stops, replaced by a high, thin wail of a single flute.)
[SLOW FADE TO BLACK]
Should we add a Prologue that establishes the "Praise-Singer's" initial warning, or would you like to see a scene where Adebisi (the son) first arrives from London, showing his internal conflict before the tragedy?
(The IYALOJA enters the garden. She does not ask permission. She carries a small earthenware pot.)
IYALOJA:
(Her voice is like grinding stones)
The guards are watching the moon, Commissioner. They are looking for the stars that fell when the Horseman’s son hit the ground. They do not see a shadow like me.
WATKINS:
What is it?
IYALOJA:
We will limp. The harvest will taste of iron. The children will be born with eyes that look backward. You have given us a "future," yes, but you have stolen our "always."
continue
To round out the tragedy, we move to a flashback—a "Scene Zero." In Soyinka’s work, the tragedy is never just about the end; it is about the weight of expectation placed on the next generation.
This scene shows Adebisi upon his arrival, caught between his Western "enlightenment" and the primal pull of his bloodline.
SCENE SEVEN: THE WHISPER OF THE SOIL (Flashback)
(The outskirts of the village. Two weeks before the ritual. ADEBISI stands alone, his leather suitcases looking like alien stones against the red earth. He wears a heavy wool overcoat—utterly impractical for the heat—as if trying to keep London wrapped around him. The PRAISE-SINGER emerges from the tall grass.)
ADEBISI:
(Wiping sweat, his voice a mix of Lagos and London)
The ground is the same, Baba. It is my shadow that has grown heavy. In England, I was a man of books. Here... I am a ghost returning to a feast I no longer have the teeth to eat.
PRAISE-SINGER:
(Circling him)
Your father eats for you. He dances for you. He prepares a path so wide that even a man in a wool coat cannot miss it. Do you know what night approaches?
ADEBISI:
I know the calendar, but I no longer feel the moon. My father writes to me of "transition" as if it were a scheduled train. But I have seen the world, Baba. I have seen cities where men die and are simply buried, and the sun rises the next day without asking for a King’s permission.
PRAISE-SINGER:
(Leaning in close, whispering)
Then why did you come back? If you are so "free," why did the scent of the rain on this specific dirt pull you across the great water?
PRAISE-SINGER:
You are the son of the Horseman. Your "Temple" is made of stone; ours is made of breath. Before the moon is full, you will learn that some laws are written in ink, but the Law of the Blood is written in fire.
(The Praise-Singer begins a low, rhythmic chant. ADEBISI slowly takes off his wool coat. He stands in his white shirt, looking down at his hands, which are beginning to tremble in time with the distant, invisible drums.)
ADEBISI:
(To himself)
I am a man of logic. I am a man of reason...
(The drumming rises in volume, swallowing his words.)
[FADE OUT]
The play is now complete in its cycle: the Warning, the Delay, the Intervention, and the Final Debt.
PRAISE-SINGER:
The traveler returns! But why does he walk as if the ground might bite his heels? Has the white man’s pavement turned your feet into glass, Adebisi?
PRAISE-SINGER:
(Sharply)
The sun in those places is a cold eye! Here, the sun is a witness. If your father does not complete the dance, the sun will stall in the sky. The crops will turn to dust in the womb of the earth. Do they teach you the "Logic of Hunger" in your London courts?
ADEBISI:
They teach that a man’s life belongs to himself. Not to a dead King. Not to a marketplace of watchers.
ADEBISI:
(Quietly)
Because I heard the drums in my sleep. Even in the middle of a lecture on Torts and Contracts, I heard the heartbeat of the horseman. I came back to tell him to stop. To tell him the world has changed.
PRAISE-SINGER:
(Laughing darkly)
You came to stop the wind? You came to tell the river to flow backward? No, Adebisi. You came back because you know that when the tree falls, the branch must decide if it will fly or if it will rot on the forest floor.
ADEBISI:
I am not a sacrifice. I am a Lawyer of the Inner Temple.
continue
To conclude the arc, we move to the Epilogue. In a Soyinka-style tragedy, the ending is never a clean resolution; it is a "twilight" where the survivors must reconcile with a world that has been fundamentally altered.
SCENE EIGHT: THE THRESHOLD OF TWILIGHT
(The Market Square. The first grey light of dawn is breaking. The bodies of OBAFEMI and ADEBISI have been removed, leaving only two circles of white ash on the ground. WATKINS stands alone near the center of the square, looking diminished. His uniform is wrinkled, his authority evaporated.)
WATKINS:
(To the empty air)
It was supposed to be a triumph of humanitarianism. I saved one life... I only wanted to save one life.
IYALOJA:
(Emerging from the mist, carrying a heavy iron staff)
You saved a husk, Commissioner, and in doing so, you let the soul of the land leak out into the gutters. Look at the horizon. Does the sun look the same to you this morning?
WATKINS:
It’s just the dawn. The earth hasn't stopped spinning because of your... theatricalities.
IYALOJA:
The earth spins for you because you have no anchor. But for us, the earth is a weight we carry on our shoulders. (She points to the ash circles). One man lived too much for the flesh. The other died to fix the father’s appetite. They have both stepped through the door now. But you... you are the one truly lost.
WATKINS:
(Defensively)
I have my orders. I have my government.
IYALOJA:
You have a map of a house you don't live in. You will go back to your bungalow, you will drink your gin, and you will wait for a promotion. But every time you close your eyes, you will see the boy’s face. You will wonder if the "Civilization" you brought was worth the silence you left behind.
(A young girl, the bride OBAFEMI took in Scene One, walks slowly across the square. She is pregnant. She stops between the two ash circles and kneels, touching the earth.)
WATKINS:
What will he be?
IYALOJA:
He will be the Question that you cannot answer. He will be the storm that your "Order" cannot predict.
(The IYALOJA strikes her staff against the ground. The sound echoes like a gunshot. She turns to the girl.)
IYALOJA:
Rise, daughter. The night is over, but the morning is heavy. We must go and teach the living how to walk in the dark.
[THE LIGHTS DIM SLOWLY UNTIL ONLY THE TWO ASH CIRCLES ARE VISIBLE. THEN, TOTAL DARKNESS.]
The play ends on the "Unresolved Chord"—a hallmark of African tragedy. The colonial power remains, but it has lost its moral certainty, and the community is left to rebuild its metaphysics from the ruins.
Here, the Iyaloja delivers the final blow to the colonial ego, and we see the symbolic passing of the burden.
IYALOJA:
(Softening her voice)
Look at her, Commissioner. She carries the seed of the man you "saved" and the brother of the man who died. That child will be born into a world where the King has no Horseman. He will be born with the taste of your iron in his mouth.
(The girl rises. She and the Iyaloja walk toward the rising sun. WATKINS remains in the center of the square, a small, solitary figure. The PRAISE-SINGER’S voice is heard one last time, offstage, a haunting, wordless melody that fades into the sound of the wind.)
CURTAIN
Since the play has reached its formal conclusion, the "continuation" in the tradition of Wole Soyinka moves into the Postscript—a space where the playwright speaks directly to the audience or the performers to ensure the "spiritual mechanics" of the play are understood.
In Death and the King's Horseman, Soyinka famously warned against focusing too much on the "clash of cultures," insisting instead on the metaphysical confrontation.
THE AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: ON THE RHYTHM OF THE VOID
I. The Drumming as Dialogue
The drums in The Last Breath of the Sun are not "background music." They are the third protagonist. In the staging, the "Great Transition" beat must never be a steady 4/4 time. It must be syncopated—a heartbeat that skips. When Watkins interrupts the ritual in Scene Three, the drums shouldn't just stop; they should shatter. The sound should mimic a physical breaking of glass. This represents the fracture in the universe that Adebisi eventually tries to seal with his own blood.
II. The Character of Watkins
Watkins must not be played as a cartoon villain. He is a man of "sincere" ignorance. His tragedy is the tragedy of the Bureaucrat—he believes that because he can measure a thing, he owns it. When he looks at the bodies at the end, he shouldn't look angry; he should look hollow. He has realized that his "Rule of Law" is a paper shield against a storm of ancient spirits.
III. The Silence of the Bride
The young bride, though she has few lines, is the "vessel." She represents the continuity of the race. While the men (Obafemi and Adebisi) are obsessed with the exit from the world, she represents the entry. Her pregnancy is the "unanswered question" left for the colonial administration. The play ends with her because, despite the deaths, the cycle of the Yoruba world-view demands that life continues, albeit scarred.
IV. The "Tragic Flaw" of the Horseman
Obafemi’s failure is not that he was arrested. His failure happened before the police arrived. It was his lingering in the "fragrance of the market." He fell in love with the world just as he was supposed to leave it. In Soyinka’s metaphysics, the Horseman’s sin is Delay. He tried to have his cake (the new bride) and his transition (the King’s journey) at the same time. The colonial intervention was merely the physical manifestation of his internal hesitation.
THE LAST WORD: A FRAGMENT OF DIALOGUE (Deleted Scene)
(Found among the "papers" of the Praise-Singer)
PRAISE-SINGER:
"You think the bridge is made of rope and wood, white man. You think if you cut the rope, the traveler stays on this side. But the bridge is made of the traveler’s will. By cutting the rope, you haven't saved him; you have made him fall into the gorge. And now, we must all listen to the sound of his screaming until the end of time."
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