Characters
Main characters
- Baroka - The Balè or reigning chieftain of Ilujinle, a Yoruba village in the realm of the Ibadan clan. A crafty individual, he is the Lion referred to in the title. At sixty-two years of age, he has already sired sixty-three children.
- Lakunle - The progressive and absurdly arrogant Westernised teacher. He is in his twenties.
- Sidi - A beautiful, yet somewhat egotistical village girl who is wooed by both Baroka and Lakunle. She is the Jewel in the title.
- Sadiku - The sly chieftess of the Balè's harem.
- Ailatu - Baroka's favourite, but not so towards the end of the drama due to an altercation over Baroka's choice to take a new wife.
Supporting characters
Village girls, a wrestler, a surveyor, schoolboys, his assorted consorts and various musicians, dancers, mummers, prisoners, traders and so on.
Read more about this topic: The Lion And The Jewel
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)