Death and the King's Horsemen Study Guide

Wole Soyinka opens his play with an author's note, in which he explains that Death and the King's Horseman is based on events that took place in Oyo, an ancient Yoruban city of Nigeria, in 1946. Soyinka sets the play a few years before, while World War II still waged, and changed other details. The individual characters are also his invention. (read more)