Page 47 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

Unit 3: Literary Terms: Comedy of Manners, Absurd Theatre, and Existentialism

Notes

A British scholar Martin Esslin, in his critical study of Samuel Beckett and French
playwrights Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet and Arthur Adamov, first used the term
“Theatre of the Absurd”.

3.2.3 Techniques in Absurd Theatre

As an experimental form of theatre, Theatre of the Absurd employs techniques borrowed from
earlier innovators. Writers and techniques frequently mentioned in relation to the Theatre of the
Absurd include the 19th-century nonsense poets, such as Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear; Polish
playwright Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz; the Russians Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Erdman, Mikhail
Volokhov and others; Bertolt Brecht’s distancing techniques in his “Epic theatre”; and the “dream
plays” of August Strindberg.

3.2.4 Theatrical Features in Absurd Theatre
Plays within this group are absurd in that they focus not on logical acts, realistic occurrences, or
traditional character development; they, instead, focus on human beings trapped in an
incomprehensible world subject to any occurrence, no matter how illogical. The theme of
incomprehensibility is coupled with the inadequacy of language to form meaningful human
connections. According to Martin Esslin, Absurdism is “the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity,
and purpose” Absurdist drama asks its viewer to “draw his own conclusions, make his own errors”.
Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, they have something to say and can be
understood”. Esslin makes a distinction between the dictionary definition of absurd (“out of
harmony” in the musical sense) and drama’s understanding of the Absurd: “Absurd is that which
is devoid of purpose.... Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is
lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, and useless”.

Characters
The characters in Absurdist drama are lost and floating in an incomprehensible universe and they
abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate.
Characters are frequently stereotypical, archetypal, or flat character types as in Commedia dell’arte.
The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible.
Many of Pinter’s plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by
some force the character can’t understand. Pinter’s first play was The Room—in which the main
character, Rose, is menaced by Riley who invades her safe space though the actual source of menace
remains a mystery—and this theme of characters in a safe space menaced by an outside force is
repeated in many of his later works. In Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit the main character, Alfred,
is menaced by Claire Zachanassian; Claire, richest woman in the world with a decaying body and
multiple husbands throughout the play, has guaranteed a payout for anyone in the town willing to
kill Alfred. Characters in Absurdist drama may also face the chaos of a world that science and logic
have abandoned. Ionesco’s recurring character Berenger, for example, faces a killer without
motivation in The Killer, and Berenger’s logical arguments fail to convince the killer that killing is
wrong. In Rhinoceros, Berenger remains the only human on Earth who hasn’t turned into a rhinoceros
and must decide whether or not to conform. Characters may find themselves trapped in a routine
or, in a metafictional conceit, trapped in a story; the titular characters in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz
& Guildenstern Are Dead, for example, find themselves in a story (Hamlet) in which the outcome has
already been written.

Language
Despite its reputation for nonsense language, much of the dialogue in Absurdist plays is naturalistic.
The moments when characters resort to nonsense language or clichés—when words appear to have

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