Osofisan’s Medaye: Time and Setting
…continued from POST #9 by Olakunbi Olasope
“The play is set sometime in March 1862 in Yorubaland. The 19th century was a period of tumultuous events in Yorubaland, particularly in the Oyo Empire. After a long and prosperous reign under Alaafin Abiodun, the king’s successors went into a fierce and bitter struggle for the throne which, inevitably, led to the disintegration of the kingdom and fall of the empire. As princes confronted each other, and weakened the royalty, so did ambitious generals venture out on their own dramatic attempts at succession and empire-building. Thus, there were great wars and spectacular conquests; notorious defeats as well as memorable surrenders, each with its own feats of dashing courage and often unconscionable cruelty. Eventually two city states emerged as the strongest of the Yoruba empire—namely, Ibadan led by Balogun Ibikunle and the fiery younger warrior, Ogunmola; and Ijaye, led by the Aare Kurunmi. But such was the competition between them that, in the end, the two cities came to a deadly confrontation. Thus, Ibadan besieged Ijaye in the year 1859 and, after three years of fighting, defeated this rival city-state and razed it to the ground”.
The foregoing is the background to the context of the play. The plot is largely similar to that of the play by Euripides, but there are obvious divergences and, in his typical style, Osofisan’s opens with a play—within—a play with the story of Ijapa and Buje. The Ijapa-Buje story examines the moral that young ladies shun pride and arrogance in courtship lest they fall into wrong hands as depicted in the Ijapa/Buje story. “Ijapa basked in the glory of conquest while Buje suffered the mockery of the people”. However, Buje took her pound of flesh on Ijapa for forcing her into a loveless marriage by becoming a hump on its back. A burden Ijapa bears till this date…
The play also has traditional Yoruba songs, music, choreography, and dance rendered by the Akunyungba singers. Their primary assignment is to weave proverbs into ribald songs against Medaye’s perceived opponents especially Iyinpo and her bridal train, who by agreeing to be Atipo’s new bride is labelled a husband snatcher. Medaye describes Iyinpo thus: “You harlot! Husband snatcher! Wait for me! Let me go! Let me teach her the lesson she failed to learn from her mother!” This way the phenomenon of the Greek chorus is transformed into a Yoruba communal celebration. The performed readings have not been received by the audience as an adaptation of a Greek tragedy—except by Classicists among them—but as dramatized readings of a Nigerian play addressing Yoruba history in order to comprehend their contemporary socio-political situation.
The discussion sessions at the end of the readings elicit fiery debates on the various themes in the play and certain cultural dissonances are identified by some members of the audience who disagree with Medaye’s position on monogamy which she stresses because of the oath sworn to her mother, Oya, a Yoruba deity. The position of these spectators is that it is unscientific to use contemporary standards to frame Medaye’s rejection of polygyny, especially when the playwright has set the play in precolonial Yorubaland. In the play, Cupid strikes Medaye rather hard. She has become but a shadow of her former self. She is unkempt in appearance as she hardly eats and she looks so gaunt that her friends worry about her mental and emotional well-being. Tooke, one of her friends admonishes her thus:
Tooke – “So sad, but that is how love is, my sister, when we let it get hold of us”.
Medaye oscillates between unrepressed emotion, especially extreme demonstrations of grief, and anger. She rains curses on Atipo for deceiving her and for breaking his vows to her by taking another bride. The oath places him under a reciprocal obligation of loyalty to her. This obligation is acknowledged and sealed with the pledge of their undying love. Atipo’s oath to Oya places him under a powerful moral and religious obligation to abide by his word. Now that he has broken this oath, Medaye prophesies a doomed end for him and his bride. Her friends try to placate her by explaining the nature of the malefolk as promiscuous and faithless. In traditional Yoruba setting, men acquire wives as a sign of affluence and as a social symbol. A man’s wealth can be measured by the number of wives and children that he has. So, Medaye’s obstinate rejection of her husband’s new bride is incomprehensible to her friends. Her friend Tooke says “men take many wives. That’s how our people have always measured the wealth of a household—by the number of co-wives assembled there. Why will your own be different?” In traditional Yoruba society, polygyny is culturally accepted.
Click on blog 11 to continue to the fundamental importance of male children in Medaye.