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Plot Summary of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels
Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels is a parabolic morality play centred on the theme of human compassion versus greed. It is the second of Femi Osofisan’s “magic boon” plays, a series that explores how desperate people behave when suddenly granted magical powers to alter their circumstances.
The play is framed as a play-within-a-play performed by an amateur theatrical troupe during a community celebration. The story follows five starving, unemployed musicians—Omele, Epo Oyinbo, Jigi, Sinsin, and Redio—who wander to Sepeteri, a crossroads. The minstrels are desperate for food after their band was banned by a new government for playing for corrupt politicians. They hope to scavenge offerings left at the crossroads for Esu, the trickster god.
However, instead of food, they find only cow dung and sawdust in a sacrificial pot. They attempt to leave but discover they are magically stuck to the ground. This prompts Omele to lead them in Esu’s song of supplication.
An Old Man appears. He reveals himself as Esu’s priest, and feeds them a magical seed. This “magic boon,” according to the priest, grants them the power to cure any human suffering simply by singing and dancing. He tells them they can demand any reward from those they heal, but warns that choosing the wrong targets out of greed will bring severe punishment instead of wealth.
As sufferers arrive, the minstrels’ true natures emerge. Epo Oyinbo cures an impotent millionaire in exchange for all of his property. Sinsin heals a dying, blood-splattered man who admits to building his wealth on human parts, and demands half his riches in return. Redio assists three corrupt businessmen in magically recovering a lost import license, and in exchange he too secures promises of a housing estate, a bank, and a shipping line. The last minstrel and only lady in their midst, Jigi, cures a suicidal prince who had burned a sacred python; she exchanges her song for his royal wealth.
Omele, however, acts differently from the rest as the play’s moral conscience with his choice of compassion over wealth. He first cures a destitute woman who has been painfully pregnant for nine years. He asks for nothing but a simple “thank you” in return. He even gives her his own necklace as a show of compassion.
The ultimate test occurs when two hideously deformed lepers arrive. They explain that they can only be cured if a healthy person embraces them, which will transfer the disease to the healer. While his friends recoil in disgust, Omele embraces and cures the lepers, but magically contracts the leprosy himself in the process. As a result, his friends abandon him.
The next morning, the four newly “rich” friends feast but ruthlessly stone the infected Omele to drive him away and avoid contamination. The Old Man returns to evaluate them. The wealthy people cured by the four greedy minstrels arrive but deny owing any rewards. It is revealed that these wealthy persons are Esu’s followers in disguise. The cured lepers then return and reveal themselves to be the supreme god Orunmila and the goddess Yeye Osun, who had disguised themselves to test the minstrels.
For their utter selfishness, the four greedy minstrels are punished by Obaluaye, the god of smallpox, who infects them with a dreadful disease. Omele is completely healed and rewarded with precious cowrie beads for his humanity; for choosing compassion over hollow material wealth.
At the end of the play, the playwright desacralizes the supernatural with a metatheatrical twist where the actors break character and remove their costumes to sing that “Esu does not exist.” They indicate that the play’s magic is merely a storytelling device to teach that compassion, not greed, is its own reward.
Background of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels
Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels is rooted in philosophical inspiration, Yoruba folklore, and a strong ideological critique of contemporary society. Femi Osofisan was directly inspired by a quote from the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus: “Principles are needed in great matters. Compassion suffices in the small.” Osofisan used this premise to centre the play entirely on the theme of compassion, which he felt was increasingly dismissed as a weakness or “effeminacy” in a modern, “macho” world. The playwright conceived the work as a response to the way modern “civilisation” and “development” have progressively distanced people from their basic humanity.
Structurally, the play is the second instalment in Osofisan’s “Magic Boon” series, following his earlier controversial work, Once Upon Four Robbers. It relies heavily on a central motif adapted from traditional folklore: a group of desperate individuals, driven to their limits by a social or political crisis, are granted a magical power by a mysterious agent to alter their circumstances. By mapping how the vagabonds exploit this wonderful boon under strict injunctions, the play functions as a parable to teach the audience about the characters’ true natures and the flaws of their society.
To give the theme a more pronounced emphasis, Osofisan deliberately shifted the setting from the marketplace used in his first “Magic Boon” play to a crossroads. In the Yoruba worldview, the crossroads is a highly metaphoric space and serves as the proper metaphysical realm for Esu, the trickster divinity who mediates between humanity and the gods. The thematic foundation of the play is closely linked to the Ifa divination system, revolving entirely around the concept of moral choice. Through these choices, Osofisan contrasts Omele’s embodiment of conscience and compassion against the other musicians, who represent the degraded, materialistic values of a greedy society.
Moreover, the play is deeply ideological. It is aimed at challenging the values of the dominant classes and highlighting the necessity for a humane social arrangement. The play intentionally desacralizes the supernatural realm, setting the human world against the divine. By the end of the play, Osofisan uses Nietzschean overtones to proclaim the “death of the gods” to advance the argument that social justice and the alleviation of human suffering cannot rely on divine intervention, but must stem from active human kindness and solidarity. Put differently, a society consumed by greed and individual survival will destroy itself, and salvation lies in collective compassion and the prioritisation of human life over material gain.
On a final note, Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels exemplifies total traditional African theatre. It adapts the Aláàrìnjó (traditional Yoruba traveling theatre) tradition with its utilisation of riddles, proverbs, call-and-response chants, dance, and live instrumentation to bridge the gap between performers and the audience.
Setting of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels
The setting of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels operates on two distinct levels: a framing narrative and the primary inner play. To begin with the former, the play utilises a metatheatrical “play-within-a-play” structure and opens during a festive community celebration. The stage directions indicate that this community setting is highly adaptable and could represent a National Youth Service Corps camp, an end-of-year school gathering, a tourists’ holiday camp, or a village assembly. Within this framing setting, an amateur theatrical troupe stages the story of the vagabond minstrels for the gathered crowd.
The main action of the minstrels’ story is set at a crossroads named Sepeteri. Omele, one of the minstrels, describes the crossroads as having paths leading in various directions: to the market, the town, the stream, and the sacred grove. Geographically and spiritually, Sepeteri is the final threshold between the human town and the sacred grove of the supreme god, Orunmila.
The characters explicitly recognise Sepeteri as Esu’s dreaded “homing ground.” Because it is a central intersection where “anyone in trouble must pass by,” it is a site where desperate people regularly leave food offerings in pots and baskets to placate Esu, hoping he will act as an intermediary to bring them children, riches, or long life. In other words, it is a place where sacrifices (ẹbọ) are laid to appease the spirits or alter one’s destiny.
Moreover, in literature and mythology, a crossroads is never just two intersecting roads; it is the symbol of a crisis point. For the starving, desperate minstrels, the crossroads is the moment they must choose which direction their lives and morals will take. They enter the setting as a unified, suffering collective, but their choices at the crossroads fracture them into individualists versus a humanitarian.
About the Author
Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan was born on June 16, 1946 in Erunwon, Ogun State, Nigeria. He is an internationally acclaimed playwright, scholar, essayist, and cultural activist who sometimes writes poetry under the pen name Okinba Launko. Osofisan was educated at the historic Government College, Ibadan, before attending the University of Ibadan. He completed further studies abroad at the University of Dakar and the Sorbonne in Paris before returning to UI where he served as a professor of Theatre Arts for decades.
Femi Osofisan belongs to the Nigeria’s “second generation” of post-colonial writers. Unlike the “first generation” (such as Wole Soyinka), who treated human destiny as bound by tragic, cosmic myths, Osofisan uses theatre as a tool for political awakening. He believes that society’s problems are man-made and economic; that regular people have the agency to change their reality. Moreover, he frequently strips traditional gods and historical legends of their absolute power. He reframes them to critique modern corruption, class struggles, and military dictatorship. His plays rely on traditional African performance elements like riddles, proverbs, call-and-response, drumming, and dance. He is fond of breaking the “fourth wall” to force the audience to debate moral and political issues.
Femi Osofisan has a prolific catalogue of works; some of which include Morountodun, Women of Owu, and Midnight Hotel. Morountodun is arguably his most famous drama. It weaves together the historical 1969 Agbekoya peasant revolt in Western Nigeria with the mythical legend of Queen Moremi of Ile-Ife. Therein, Titubi, a spoiled bourgeois girl, volunteers to infiltrate the peasant rebel camp to capture their leader. However, witnessing the severe oppression and genuine suffering of the farmers transforms her. She rejects her wealthy background to fight alongside the peasants. Some of the themes explored in the play are class conflict, revolutionary consciousness, gender empowerment, and the transformation of the elite.
His other plays include Once Upon Four Robbers, The Chattering and the Song, Èṣù and the Vagabond Minstrels, Tegonni: An African Antigone, Birthdays Are Not for Dying, Another Raft (in response to J.P. Clark’s The Raft), and The Engagement (an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Proposal).
Osofisan is highly regarded for his intercultural adaptations and prose fiction. He has successfully Africanised several Western classics, some of which are written by Euripides (Medea / Women of Owu), Sophocles (Antigone / Tegonni), Chekhov (The Proposal / The Engagement), and Nikolai Gogol (The Government Inspector / Who’s Afraid of Solarin?). He also authored Kolera Kolej, Cordelia, and Maami, gripping novellas that focus on mismanagement, neocolonialism, personal integrity, political upheavals, and maternal sacrifice. Maami was famously adapted into a major Nollywood feature film by Tunde Kelani. More recently, Cordelia was adapted into a film by the same film director.
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