Willis Richardson was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1889.

He spent his

early years growing up in Washington, D.C where he attended M Street High School. It

was whilst here that he, upon the advice of one of his teachers, took up playwriting.

Among his most notable works was The Chip Woman’s Fortune which was the first

production by an African-American on Broadway. Richardson used many of his plays to

comment on the socio-cultural developments of his era. In his play The King’s Dilemma,

for instance, Richardson uses the themes, setting, and dialogue as social commentary

to challenge the status quo.

The King’s Dilemma consists of a number of prominent and sometimes

contrasting themes. Featured among them are class and social structure, loyalty and

friendship, democracy and the monarchy, and race. Most notably, Richardson opens his

play by gently introducing his audience to the classist society in which it is set. The

guards’ opening conversation makes mention of the King’s prohibition on his son, the

Prince, fraternizing with “urchins” or commoners. The Prince seems to be quite aware of

his father’s disapproval of his actions and choice of playmates as he craftily ensures

that his playtime is spent beyond the peering eyes of anyone from the castle. Moreover,

I believe Richardson deliberately refers to the young lad as “The Prince” in an

alliterative nod to this character’s naive yet unassumingly shrewd and machiavellian

nature. The Prince demonstrates his wit, knowledge of social customs, politics and court

intrigue to outwit his father at every turn. Further, he uses his wit to justify his choice of

friends and the loyalty he has to them by demonstrating to his father that all people,

regardless of social background, are fundamentally the same on all levels. In fact, the

permeating theme of class struggle weaves itself through the narrative, touches every
other prevailing theme, but is ever countered at every turn by Prince Nyanza’s pithy

deliveries and almost unassailable knowledge. In fact, Nyanza enshrines the struggle

between the monarchy and democracy and embodies in many ways some of the

modern tendencies of twenty-first century monarchs to be less hegemonic and, at least

outwardly, more egalitarian. However, nowhere does Richardson use the Prince’s

commentary to address the status quo as pointedly as he does in addressing racism.

He crafts the Prince’s wit and responses to the King to bring up themes which existed in

the society in which he lived and then countered that rhetoric with positive new-world

outlooks. Now, regardless of the potency of these themes, they cannot be wholly

understood without examining how Richardson uses the play’s setting to as social

commentary.

The play is set in the future in the last kingdom of the world. By this, Richardson

seems to imply that he believes issues of race and class will perpetuate until the end of

time. Nonetheless, his placing of the young Prince in apposition to the King’s dialogue

and ideology implies that he believes there will always be a voice of hope which fights

for equality and opposes evil. In fact, using the setting, Richardson makes it quite clear

that the Prince is the beacon of moral good and righteousness who “dwells in a white

tower”. Nonetheless, it is equally true that the play is tinged by hints of fatalistic nihilism

as he crafts what seems to be a dystopian world in which society has gone back to royal

rule and democracy and equality are but nascent ideals. Richardson leaves it up to the

mind of the reader to conject the series of events which might have led to this. Was it

war, famine, etc? Regardless, of its cause one could safely assume that Richardson
was perhaps greatly influenced by the effects of WWI and WWII as he was witness to

many of these events.

Richardson’s final source of social commentary comes in the form of dialogue.

The language of the characters is archaic and Shakespearean but powerful. It reflects

Richardson’s classical training and would have catered to the finer tastes of his

audience. The dialogue uncovers some of the assumptions of the time in which they are

written but does so in a manner which would force his audience to examine the social

constructs of their current world. He deftly uses the King’s dialogue to reveal deep-

seated biases and issues of class struggle and racism, and counters these issues using

the Prince’s dialogue and stage directions. My final comments on Richardson’s use of

dialogue has to do with his choice of names for his two main protagonists, Nyanza the

Prince and Zanzibo his friend. The name Nyanza means “water” or “lake” and is a fitting

description of the Prince. Water, like the Prince’s opinions, is refreshing and universal.

His name symbolises something which is vital to and connects us all. Zanzibo, on the

other hand, derives his name from the African country of Zanzibar which means “the

Black country”. In a world where Black people were maligned and relegated to the back

of society, such a name presents hope to members of his Black audience and gave

them hope.