what is death and the king horseman about
Death and the King's Horseman Death and the King's Horseman is a play by Wole Soyinka based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria during British colonial rule: the horseman of a Yoruban King was prevented from committing ritual suicide by the colonial authorities.[1] In addition to the British intervention, Soyinka calls the horseman's own conviction toward suicide into question, posing a problem that throws off the community's balance.
Flogging a dead horse According to the Oxford English Dictionary,[1] the first recorded use of the expression in its modern sense was by the English politician and orator John Bright, referring to the Reform Act of 1867, which called for more democratic representation in Parliament. Trying to rouse Parliament from its apathy on the issue, he said in a speech, would be like trying to flog a dead horse to make it pull a load. The Oxford English Dictionary cites The Globe, 1872, as the earliest verifiable use of flogging a dead horse, where someone is said to have "rehearsed that [. . .] lively operation known as flogging a dead horse".[2]