A Dance of the Forests

The Forest Head is the father of the forest spirits and the head of the play’s Orisha pantheon, masquerading as Obaneji in the first half of A Dance of the Forests. The Forest Head subtly guides the action of the play, giving Aroni permission to invite the Dead Man and Dead Woman to the Dance of the Dead, turning back time, and guiding the humans deeper into the forest for the masque and trial. The Forest Head wishes to correct humanity’s behavior, striving for the villagers to build a better future by avoiding repeating the mistakes of the past. However, he cannot directly intervene in human affairs without seeming hypocritical, as his direct intervention would undermine his position that the humans are even capable of saving themselves. By the end of the play, the Forest Head is discouraged; he does not believe humanity is capable of breaking the cycle of violence after re-visiting the past through the context of the present tensions in the village. Through the Forest Head, Soyinka suggests that neither religion nor supernatural forces can save Nigerians from themselves. 

Aroni, the Lame One, is a Yoruba forest spirit typically depicted with the head and tail of a dog. He only has one leg and moves by hopping, as described in the stage directions. At Agboreko’s request, Aroni summoned two of the villagers’ dead ancestors to attend the Gathering of the Tribes. However, Aroni subverted expectations by summoning the Dead Man and the Dead Woman, who were wronged in life by previous incarnations of several of the villagers. This is in accordance with the Forest Head’s will that the living should be taught to learn from the past. Aroni presides over the Dance of the Dead with the Forest Head, and serves as the narrator of the prologue, functioning as a liaison between both the Forest Head and the mortal world, and the play itself and the audience. Unlike the Forest Head, Aroni is more interested in justice for the wrongs of the past than in preventing future human mistakes. Aroni is also portrayed as impartial, preferring to judge the humans but let them live, in contrast to Eshuoro’s more violent desire for vengeance.

The play’s main antagonist, Eshuoro Is an invention of Soyinka’s, combining the Yoruba trickster god Eshu with Oro, and exhibits characteristics of both gods. He is wrathful and dangerous, vowing revenge on Demoke for carving his tree and killing his devotee, Oremole. He bites the top off of Murete’s home tree to take out his frustration, and nearly kills Demoke at the end of the play. He also acts as a trickster, frequently appearing in disguise and disrupting the Dance of the Dead. Despite his wrath, he is unable to act in a way that is not in accordance with the Forest Head’s will, and his revenge is ultimately thwarted when Ogun saves Demoke’s life. Unlike the other gods in the play, Eshuoro displays little concern for the human characters other than Oremole.

Ogun is a Yoruba war god and the patron god of artists, metalworkers, and carvers. He is Demoke’s patron god and vows to protect Demoke from Eshuoro’s wrath. Ogun acts in a much calmer, calculated manner than Eshuoro, causing no trouble for the other forest spirits and Orisha. Ogun thwarts Eshuoro’s revenge when he saves Demoke from falling from the village idol tree. Ogun is closely related to Yoruba creation myths, and his associated crafts—metalwork and carving—are at the heart of Yoruba culture. However, Soyinka does not present Ogun as an uncomplicatedly moral being; Ogun vows to protect Demoke even though Demoke murdered Oremole. Soyinka, consistent with Yoruba tradition, allows the Orisha to have complex motivations and moral behaviors. 

In his first life, the Dead Man was the captain of Mata Kharibu’s army. He is summoned to the Gathering of the Tribes by Aroni, the Lame One, at the request of the villagers, along with his wife, the Dead Woman. The Dead Man shares a connection with many of the villagers, who, in previous lives, also served various functions in Mata Kharibu’s court. The Dead Man is fat and bloated, and he wears a moldy warrior’s outfit, his ghoulish appearance indicative of his suffering and unrest in the afterlife. In life, he was the Warrior, a proud captain of a unit of soldiers who refused to fight a pointless war for Mata Kharibu, and was enslaved for his resistance and castrated for his rejection of the immoral Madame Tortoise. In the Dead Man, Soyinka explores the possibility of justice as well as the futility of resistance against a corrupt but powerful elite. The Dead Man is not rewarded for his honorable resistance to Mata Kharibu’s immoral war; he is even taunted by Eshuoro (in disguise as the Questioner) for not learning from his experiences and living better in his next lives. Soyinka questions, via the Dead Man, whether moral action and courage are enough in the face of immoral political forces, indicating that individual resistance is not enough to ensure success. 

The wife of the Dead Man, the Dead Woman was also a member of the Court of Mata Kharibu in her previous life. Because she died before she could give birth, she has remained pregnant for eight centuries. When the Forest Head summons the living to stand trial for the crimes of their ancestors, the Dead Woman is finally able to find peace when she gives birth to the Half-Child. The Dead Woman represents the clearest arc of redemption in Soyinka’s play, as she achieves relief from her suffering. However, consistent with Soyinka’s ambivalent portrayal of the future, the Dead Woman’s child is doomed to die, and even in her small measure of justice there is continued suffering. In Part 1, the Dead Woman and the Dead Man are rebuffed or outright ignored by the villagers, who prefer to focus on the more glorious aspects of their history, and are unwilling to recognize or atone for their mistakes, which led to the tragic fates of the Dead Woman and the Dead Man 800 years before. 

Rola is a village prostitute, and she was known as Madame Tortoise in her previous life in the Court of Mata Kharibu, and both incarnations of Rola are embroiled in scandal. Madame Tortoise’s name refers to the Yoruba folk tradition of tortoises being tricksters. Madame Tortoise attempts to seduce the Warrior into usurping the throne from Mata Kharibu; when he refuses, she has him castrated and sold into slavery and has an active part in the death of his wife. Rola’s scandals include the deaths of two of her lovers: one was murdered, one died by suicide. Despite this, Rola is a proud woman, defending her lifestyle when questioned by Obaneji. Rola is present at the Dance of the Dead along with Demoke and Adenebi. In Rola/Madame Tortoise, Soyinka explores a character who is committed to justifying her own actions, and unwilling or unable to take responsibility for the way her behavior impacts the community. 

Agboreko is known as the Elder of Sealed Lips. He performs rites to honor the Forest Head, and he did the same in his past life in the Court of Mata Kharibu, where he was also known as the Soothsayer. Agboreko’s personality is notably stuffy and obtuse. Through Agboreko, Soyinka criticizes the influence of spiritual leaders who prioritize their own power and position over the good of the community, yet also grants the spiritual leader a measure of wisdom, as it is the Soothsayer who warns Mata Kharibu of the coming bloodshed because of the corrupt king’s actions.