This study is a critical reading of Wole Soyinka’s selected plays, The Swamp Dwellers (1958), The Lion and the Jewel (1959), The Strong Breed (1963), and Death and the King’s Horseman (1971), in terms of Henry Louis Gates’ concept of signifyin(g). It provides an interpretation based on four types of signifyin(g), including Tropological Revision, Speakerly Text, Talking Text, and Rewriting the Speakerly. According to Henry Louis Gates, who coined the term “Signifying Monkey,” there is a difference between African-American vernacular English and what is generally perceived as a Western literary tradition. Black vernacular almost always receives its value compared to white literature. Signifying theory tries to give power and autonomy back to African-American vernacular. To find out the four features of signifying and its final determination in the concerned plays, the primary concern of this research, the procedure followed to actualize the signifying phenomenon, should be investigated in the first place. After explaining the process of formation of the concept of signifying and elaborating on its features in each play, it is concluded that in each of the plays mentioned above, there exist -to some degree- some or all of the four concepts of signifying which provides them with a possibility to be studied. Finding instances of Signifying in Soyinka’s works proves the fact that although the Nobel Laureate writes using the English language, he keeps black vernacular in his mind and incorporates instances of it to his works.
