Social (Mis)Conduct, Yorùbá Moral Epistemology, and Wesoo, Hamlet!*

This chapter proposes a reading of Femi Osofisan’s Wesoo, Hamlet! (2012) through the lens of the dichotomy of behaviour, which typifies Yorùbá people’s conception of the acceptable mode of social relation, that is, the Yoruba moral epistemology. Using this philosophical theory of social relationship, the chapter discusses Osofisan’s deployment of mythology, ritual, and history to engage historical violence and chaos and perpetual leadership failures in his country, which he had earlier condemned in his inaugural lecture entitled Playing Dangerously: Drama at the Frontiers of Terror in a “Postcolonial” State (1997). Combining Barry Hallen’s typology of behaviour, the Yorùbá concept of omolúàbí, the àjobí and àjogbé paradigm, and Ifá’s traditional world of thoughts and practices, under the description of humanity and social conduct called sociation, the chapter examines the thoughts and actions of Ayibi and Leto as a reflection of the playwright’s sociopolitical realities.