Elesin, Cuchulain, and the Kingdom: The Culture Hero's Sacrifice

Elesin, Cuchulain, and the Kingdom: The Culture Hero's Sacrifice A. THOMAS CA VANO From the perspective of archetypal storytelling, the two Nobel Prize-winning postcolonial playwrights Wole Soyinka and W.B. Yeats tell remarkably similar stories in their plays The Death of Cuchulain and Death and the King's Horseman. This article will examine the common ground between these two plays and propose that as the goals of the two playwrights coincided, so did their plots, characters, and imagery. The natives of colonial Ireland and Nigeria saw that part of the British Empire's strength was the unifying power of its literature and myths. Malagasy poet Rabemanjara reveled in the value of the European languages as booty, calling them a "treasure of identity, the vehicle of their thought, the golden key to their soul, the magic Sesame which opens wide the door of their secrets, the forbidden cave where they have hidden the loot taken from our fathers and for which we must demand a reckoning" (Soyinka, Art 140). This mythology - of King Arthur, Richard Lionheart, St. George, and Robin Hood - tells the story ofthe ancient land, symbolized in unicorn, crest, and lion, that stands invisibly behind the modem state of Great Britain. The stories immortalize Camelot and Sherwood Forest as mythical places at the heart ofthe culture, to be revered by all who speak the language. The problem for the colonials in African and Ireland was that not only was there no place for them in this English mythology, but there was no mythology in English for them or their places. The use and focus of the English language placed the colonized on the periphery of English myth and history, though Ireland and Yorubaland are themselves ancient places. The people of these ancient lands, newly re-emerging into autonomy, needed to recover their own treasures of identity. William Butler Yeats and Wale Soyinka both set out to use the borrowed English tongue to tell powerful stories at the heart of their own cultures. In these myths were encoded their own nations' identity and strength. One story told by both oftllese postcolonial playwrights is that of the self-sacrifice of the Culture Hero. Modern Drama, 45:3 (Fall 2002) 409 4 10 A. THOMAS CAVANO Death and the King's Horseman and The Death of Cuchulain are complelely different in style. In Soyinka's play, Elesin's journey begins with the Horseman dancing like a groom toward a wedding with death. By the final, Iragic act, Elesin is shamed and chained, wringing his own neck. Yeats's Ulster hero, in contrast, lives in a dream world of poetic symbolism. He launches himself loward death serenely, while characters from his past visit from Ihe mists. He seems unruffled at being "blinded by heroism, butchered by a clown" (Jeffares 14). But beneath the dissimilar surface details of the two plays lie the parallel Ihemes of a threatened kingdom, fatal duty, pivotally powerful women, and sacrificed sons. The structure of The Death ofCuchulain is episodic; it includes a prologue, three dramatic scenes, and an epilogue. The play begins with the entrance of "[oj very old man looking like something out of mythology" onto a bare stage "of any period:' (209). He tells the audience what is expected of them. There are to be only fifty to 100 audience members. They must not be pseudointellectuals , pickpockets, or opinionated bitches (209-10). They are not to shuffle their feet or to interrupt the actors. He describes the level of abstraction in which the play will be presented - parallelograms will represent severed heads; a dancer, if he can find one good enough, will dance the lament. The first dramatic scene begins as Eithne Inguba, mistress of the legendary Cuchulain, enters his campsite under a spell. She tells him' that his wife says he must "ride out and fight" the Connacht invaders, who are laying waste to his home (21 I). The war goddess Morrigu breaks the spell, and Eithne awakens and tries to take back her words, for Queen Maeve's army will destroy the warrior, but Cuchulain dismisses her fears and goes out to do battle . She laments, "Cuchulain is about to die" (2...