Every quotation here was checked, with its speaker and scene, against two copies of the published play, which agree on every word. Pearson prescribes Methuen (Bloomsbury) editions, and those could not be checked from here. Your clean copy is the one you take into the exam, so if a word in it ever differs from this page, quote your copy.
“My rein is loosened. / I am master of my Fate.”
Elesin, Scene 1, after the story of the Not-I bird
Elesin pictures himself given free rein, like the thoroughbred the Praise-Singer has just praised: unchecked, and choosing his own path. He claims to command fate itself rather than submit to it. It is the boast the whole play measures him against, and the horse imagery ties it to his title. By Scene 5 he is literally bound in chains, and mastery has become the thing he most obviously lacks.
“The world is not a constant honey-pot.”
Elesin, Scene 1, answering the women who ask whether anything will hold him back
Elesin means that he has enjoyed the world's sweetness and can leave it, but the metaphor admits appetite even as it renounces it: he describes life as something to be eaten. The appetite resurfaces minutes later when he asks for a bride, and the honey returns when he answers Iyaloja's warning. This is Elesin's line, although some revision materials give it to Iyaloja.
“Life is honour. / It ends when honour ends.”
Elesin, Scene 1, just before the women's “man of honour” praise
Two short, balanced sentences state Elesin's code as a law: honour is not part of life but the whole of it. The line sets the terms of his tragedy with painful exactness. When he survives the night, the logic of his own words says he is already dead, which is how Olunde and Iyaloja treat him in Scenes 4 and 5.
“This market is my roost.”
Elesin, Scene 1, to the Praise-Singer, before the Not-I bird story
The metaphor makes Elesin a cockerel, echoing the Praise-Singer's teasing about the cockerel who leaves his tail behind, and makes the market his home and his stage. He goes on to call himself a chicken with a hundred mothers. The image is affectionate and comic, but it also places him among the women who will judge him, and explains why he chooses the market for his leave-taking.
“The sap of the plantain never dries.”
Elesin, Scene 1, arguing for the bride
A plantain grows a young shoot as the parent stalk withers, so Elesin presents his marriage as continuity: his seed will stay in the earth he leaves. It is a clever argument, and it wins. Soyinka then makes the same plant the instrument of judgement: in Scene 5 Iyaloja mocks the hollow parent stem, and the Praise-Singer says the young shoot, Olunde, has fed the old.
“be sure the seed you leave in it attracts no curse”
Iyaloja, Scene 1, near the end of the scene
Iyaloja's blessing arrives with a condition. Her warning takes Elesin's own image of seed and earth and turns it into a threat, and the audience hears it as foreshadowing. In Scene 5 she reminds him that she warned him exactly this, and the Bride's silent presence outside his cell makes the curse visible.
“How can man talk against death to person in uniform of death?”
Amusa, Scene 2, refusing to report while the Pilkingses wear the egungun costume
The pidgin grammar invites the Pilkingses to laugh, and Jane later mimics the line, but the logic is exact, and Amusa explains it himself: it would be like speaking against the government to a man in police uniform. He recognises the costume as the uniform of the dead. The man they patronise understands their dress better than they do.
“it's always lurking under the surface somewhere”
Pilkings, Scene 2, after reading Amusa's report
Pilkings assumes at once that the report means ritual murder, and his image makes Yoruba custom a hidden danger waiting beneath a calm surface. The phrase reveals his settled view of the people he governs: they are to be watched, and their customs stamped out. Joseph soon corrects the fact, but not the attitude.
“the eater of white left-overs”
A girl, Scene 3, driving Amusa out of the market
The insult makes Amusa a servant who lives on what his masters discard. It begins one of the play's central motifs: Olunde will call his own father an eater of left-overs in Scene 4, and in Scene 5 Iyaloja lists the left-overs Elesin chose. The word moves from the sergeant to the Horseman, and the audience sees Elesin fall into Amusa's place.
“If you cannot come Elesin, tell my dog.”
Praise-Singer, Scene 3, speaking in the dead King's voice during the trance-dance
The Praise-Singer recalls the King's own words, a pact that allows even failure a dignified way out: send word by the dog or the horse. Elesin proudly answers that he trusts no beast with messages between a king and his companion. In Scene 5 the dog and horse have indeed gone ahead of him, and the Praise-Singer's reminder of the pact becomes an accusation.
“It takes an Elesin to die the death of death”
Iyaloja, Scene 3, as Elesin sinks into his trance
Iyaloja's line comes at the end of a list in which each person dies the death that fits them, the valiant in war, the swimmer in water. The repetition in “the death of death” makes Elesin's passage unique and almost impossible to describe. It is the height of the market's faith in him, spoken just before that faith is broken.
“Life should never be thrown deliberately away.”
Jane to Olunde, Scene 4, about the captain who blew up his ship
Jane states the Western view as a rule without exceptions, and “deliberately” is the word that carries it. Yet she has just told the story of a captain who chose to die to save the people round a harbour, and Olunde's quiet question about those innocent people shows her rule cannot account for the sacrifice her own culture admires.
“your greatest art is the art of survival”
Olunde to Jane, Scene 4
Olunde's praise is double-edged. He admires British endurance in the war, but the repeated “art” turns survival into a skill with no higher purpose, and he goes on to ask the British to let others survive in their own way. The irony deepens when Elesin's survival turns out to be the catastrophe.
“I have no father, eater of left-overs.”
Olunde to Elesin, the last line of Scene 4
The son who calmly defended his father's duty now denies him, as his father once disowned him. The insult takes the girls' word for Amusa and turns it on the Horseman: Elesin has chosen scraps over the feast the ancestors prepared. Elesin later says the contempt rescued something of his shame, because it showed him he had a true son.
“You did not save my life District Officer. You destroyed it.”
Elesin to Pilkings, Scene 5, in the cell
Two short sentences overturn the whole colonial logic of rescue. Pilkings believes he has done a good deed; Elesin tells him that saving a body has destroyed a life, because life for Elesin was honour. The formal address, “District Officer”, keeps him at the distance of his office.
“a weight of longing on my earth-held limbs”
Elesin to the Bride, Scene 5
This is Elesin's confession. After blaming the white man and the gods, he admits that his weakness came not only from the intrusion but from desire for the world. The compound “earth-held” makes the ground itself cling to him, which recalls the Praise-Singer's lump of earth in his slippers. It is the strongest evidence that the failure was partly his.
“You have betrayed us.”
Iyaloja to Elesin, Scene 5
Four blunt words, after a scene full of images, give the community's verdict. Iyaloja follows them with a long catalogue contrasting what the market gave Elesin with the scraps he chose, built on a repeated pattern of what they said and what he said. The shift from plain statement to accumulating contrast shows her anger building.
“To prevent one death you will actually make other deaths?”
Iyaloja to Pilkings, Scene 5, when he says his men will shoot
Iyaloja exposes the contradiction at the heart of the rescue: Pilkings is ready to kill to prevent a death. She follows it with sarcastic praise of the wisdom of the white race. The question anticipates the ending, when Pilkings's intervention has produced two deaths instead of one.
“The son has proved the father”
Iyaloja, Scene 5, uncovering Olunde's body
In six words Iyaloja names the reversal the play has built towards. The son has proved his father's line true by doing what the father would not, and shamed him by doing it. The natural order of the plantain, old feeding young, has been turned upside down.
“Turn your mind only to the unborn.”
Iyaloja to the Bride, the last line of the play
After two deaths, the play ends by turning from the dead and even the living to the third world of Yoruba belief. The command is spoken to the Bride, who may carry Elesin's child, so the hope is fragile and specific. The line can be read as consolation or as warning: the future must now repair what this night broke.