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Prof. Dr. Fernando de Toro
English 4.130
Martin Esslin
The Theatre of the Absurd (1961)
Samuel Beckett
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
Absurdity and the Absurd
The Tradition of the Absurd
The Significance of The Absurd
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 I.
Introduction: The Absurdity and the Absurd
On 19 November 1957, a group of worried actors
were preparing to face their audience. The actors
were members of the company of the San Francisco
Actors' Workshop. (1)
The audience consisted of fourteen hundred
convicts at the San Quentin penitentiary. No live
play had been performed at San Quentin since
Sarah Bernhardt appeared there in 1913. (1)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The leading article of the prison paper showed how
clearly the writer had understood the meaning of the play:
It was an expression, symbolic in order to avoid all
personal error, by an author who expected each member
of his audience to draw his own conclusions, make his
own errors. It asked nothing in point, it forced no
dramatized moral on the viewer, it held out no specific
hope. . . . We're still waiting for Godot, and shall continue
to wait. When the scenery gets too drab and the action too
slow, we'll call each other names and swear to part
forever—but then, there's no place to go!‘ (2)
Why did a play of the supposedly esoteric avant-garde
make so immediate and so deep an impact on an
audience of convicts? (3)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Because it confronted them with a situation in some
ways analogous to their own? Perhaps. (3)
Or perhaps because they were unsophisticated enough to
come to the theatre without any preconceived notions
and ready-made expectations, so that they avoided the
mistake that trapped so many established critics who
condemned the play for its lack of plot, development,
characterization, suspense, or plain common sense. (3)
The reception of Waiting for Godot at San Quentin, and
the wide acclaim given to plays by Ionesco, Adamov,
Pinter, and others, testify that these plays, which are so
often superciliously dismissed as nonsense or
mystification, have some-thing to say and can be
understood. (3)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
Most of the incomprehension with which plays of this
type are still being received by critics and theatrical
reviewers, most of the bewilderment they have caused
and to which they still give rise, come from the fact that
they are [were] part of a new, and still developing
stage convention that has not yet been generally
understood and has hardly ever been defined. (3)
Inevitably, plays written in this new convention will,
when judged by the standards and criteria of another,
be regarded as impertinent and outrageous impostures. (3)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story,
these have no story or plot to speak of;
If a good play is judged by subtlety of characterization
and motivation, these are often without recognizable
characters and present the audience with almost
mechanical puppets;
If a good play to have a fully explained theme, which is
neatly exposed and rally solved, these often have neither
a beginning nor an end. (4)
 They can be judged only by the standards of the
Theatre of the Absurd […]. (4)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 It must be stressed, -however, that the dramatists
whose work is here discussed do not form part of
any self-proclaimed or self-conscious school or
movement. (4)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
If they also, very clearly and in spite of themselves,
have a good deal in common, it is because their
work most sensitively mirrors and reflects the
preoccupations and anxieties, the emotions and
thinking of many of their contemporaries in the
Western world. (4)
The Theatre of the Absurd, however, can be seen
as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude
most genuinely representative of our own time. (4)
The decline of religious faith was masked until the
end of the Second World War by the substitution of
religions of progress, nationalism, and various
totalitarian fallacies. (5)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
By 1942, Albert Camus was calmly putting the
question why, since life had, lost all meaning, man
should not seek escape in suicide.
 Quote Sisyphus
In one of the great, seminal heart-searchings of our
time, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus tried to
diagnose the human situation in a world of shattered
beliefs:
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
A world that can be explained by reasoning,
however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe
that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light,
man feels a stranger. He is an irremediable exile,
because he is deprived of memories of a lost
homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a
promised land to come. This divorce between man
and his life, the actor of his setting, truly constitutes
the feeling of Absurdity. (5)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
In an essay on Kafka, Ionesco defined his
understanding of the Absurd as follows:
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, useless. (5)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
This sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity
of the human condition is the theme of the plays of
Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco, Genet, and many other
writers. (5)
The Theatre of the Absurd tries to achieve a unity
between its basic assumptions and the form in
which these are expressed (performativity). (6)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
If Sartre argues that existence comes before
essence and that human personality can be reduced
to pure potentiality and the freedom to choose itself
anew at any moment, he presents his ideas in plays
based on brilliantly drawn characters who remain
wholly consistent and thus reflect the old convention
that each human being ahs a core of immutable,
unchanging essence – in fact, an immortal soul. (6)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing
about the absurdity of the human condition; it
merely presents it in being-that is, in terms of
concrete stage images.
This is the difference between the approach of the
philosopher and that of the poet. (6)
It is this striving for an integration between the
subject-matter and the form in which is expressed
that separates the Theatre of the Absurd from the
Existentialist Theatre. (7)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd tends toward a radical
devaluation of language, toward a poetry that is to
emerge from the concrete and objectified images of
the stage itself. (7)
The Theatre of the Absurd is thus part of the ‘anti-
literary’ movement of our time, which has found its
expression in abstract painting, with its rejection of
‘literary’ elements in pictures. (7)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
II. The Tradition of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a return to old, even
archaic, traditions.
Its novelty lies in its somewhat unusual combination
of such antecedents, and a survey of these will
show what may strike the unprepared spectator is
iconoclastic and incomprehensible innovation is the
fact mere1y an expansion, revaluation, and
development of procedures that are familiar and
completely acceptable in only slightly different
contexts. 281
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre of the Absurd, wholly delightful and not in
the least obscure. It is only because habit and
fossilized convention have so narrowed the public's
expectation as to what constitutes theatre proper
that attempts to widen its range meet with angry
protests from those who have come to see a certain
closely defined kind of entertainment and who lacks
the spontaneity of mind to let a slightly different
approach make its impact on them. (282)
 The element of ‘pure’, abstract theatre in the
Theatre of the Absurd is an aspect of its anti-literary
attitude, its turning away from language as an
instrument of expression of the deepest levels of
meaning. (282)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
In Beckett and Ionesco we find a return to an earlier
non-verbal forms of theatre. (282-283)
They have deep, often metaphysical meaning, and
express more than language could. (283)
The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery
reveal a deeper wisdom than that which the poet
himself is able to put it into words and concepts.
(283)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
There has always been a close relationship between
the performers of wordless skills —jugglers,
acrobats, tightrope walkers aerialists, an animal
trainers – and the clown.
This is a powerful and deep secondary tradition of
the theatre, from which the legitimate stage has
again and again drawn new strength and vitality.
It is the tradition of the mimus, or the mime, of
antiquity, a form of popular theatre that coexisted
with classical tragedy and comedy and was often far
more popular an influential. (284)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Such grotesque characters appeared in the mimus
within a crudely realistic convention, but,
characteristically, these plays, which were often
half improvised, were not bound by any of the strict
rules of the regular tragedy or comedy. (284)
 Equally basic among the age-old traditions present
in the Theatre of the Absurd is the use of mythical,
allegorical dreamlike modes of thought —the
projection into concrete terms of psychological
realities. (301)
 For there is a close connection between myth and
dream; myth have been called the collective dream
images of mankind. (301)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The world of myth has entirely ceased to be
effective on a collective plane in most rationally
organized Western societies. (301-302)
 Theatre of the Absurd [is part of] the tradition of the
iconoclasts: Jarry, Apollinaire, the Dadaists, some of
the German Expressionists, the Surrealists, and the
prophets of a wild, and ruthless theatre, like Artaud
and Vitrac. (308)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The theatre should aim at expressing what language
is incapable of putting into words. (335)
 It is not a matter of suppressing speech in the
theatre but of changing its role, and especially or
reducing its position. (335)
 Above all, it is the fact that for the first time this
approach has met with a wide response from a
broadly based public.
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 This is a characteristic not so much of the Theatre of
the Absurd as of its epoch.
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 III. The Significance of the Absurd
 When Nietzsche's Zarathustra descended from his
mountains to preach to mankind, he met a saintly
hermit in the forest. 350
 This old man invited him to stay in the wilderness
rather than go into the cities of men. 350
 When Zarathustra asked the hermit how he passed
his time in his solitude, he replied: I make up songs
and sing them; and when I make up songs I laugh, I
weep, and I growl; thus do I praise God. 350
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Zarathustra declined the old man's offer and
continued on his journey. 350
 But when he was alone, he spoke thus to his heart:
 Can it be possible! This old saint in the forest has
not yet heard that God is dead! (350)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Zarathustra was first published in 1883. The number
of people for whom God is dead has greatly
increased since Nietzsche's day, and mankind has
learn the bitter lesson of the falseness and evil
nature of some of the cheap and vulgar substitutes
that have been set up to take his place.
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 And so, after two terrible wars, there are still many
who are trying to come to terms with the implications
of Zarathustra’s message, searching for a way in
which they can, with dignity, confront a universe
deprived of what was once its centre and its living
purpose, a world deprived of a generally accepted
integrating principle, which has become disjointed,
purposeless-absurd. (350)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The Theatre of the Absurd is one of the expressions
of this search. (350)
 […] that is the possibility of knowing the laws of
conduct and ultimate values, as deductible from a
firm foundation of revealed certainty about the
purpose of man in the universe. (351)
 at least in search of a dimension of the Ineffable; an
effort to make man aware of the ultimate realities of
his condition, to still in him again the lost sense of
cosmic wonder and primeval anguish, to shock him
out of an existence that has become trite,
mechanical, complacent, and deprived of the dignity
and awareness. (351)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The Theatre of the Absurd forms part of the
unceasing endeavor of the true artists of our time to
breach this dead wall of complacency and
automatism and to re-establish an awareness of
man's situation when confronted with the ultimate
reality of his condition. (351)
 This is the feeling of the deadness and mechanical
senselessness of half-unconscious lives, the feeling
of ‘human beings secreting inhumanity’, which
Camus describes in The Myth of Sisyphus: (351)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 In certain hours of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of
their gestures, their senseless pantomime, makes
stupid everything around them. A man speaking on
the telephone behind a glass partition—one cannot
hear him but observes his trivial gesturing. One asks
oneself, why is he alive? This malaise in front of
man's own inhumanity, this incalculable letdown
when faced with the image of what we are, this
‘nausea’, as a contemporary writer calls it, also is
the Absurd. (Camus, The Absurd Reasoning, 11) (351352)

Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 That is why [we] always see man stripped of the
accidental circumstances of social position or
historical context; (352)
 confronted with the basic choices the basic
situations of his existence: man faced with time and
therefore waiting, in Beckett’s plays. (352)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Concerned as it is with the ultimate realities of the
human condition, the relatively few
fundamental
problems of life and death, isolation and
communication the Theatre of the Absurd, however
grotesque, frivolous, and irreverent it may appear,
represents a return to the original, religious function
of the theatre—the confrontation of man with the
spheres of myth and religious reality. (353)
 Like ancient Greek tragedy and the medieval
mystery plays and baroque allegories, the Theatre
of the Absurd is intent on making its audience aware
of man’s precarious and mysterious position in the
universe.(353)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Theatre of the Absurd merely communicates one
poet's most intimate and personal intuition of the
human situation, his own sense of being, his
individual vision of the world. (353)
 This is the subject-matter of the Theatre of the
Absurd, and it determines its form, which must, of
necessity, represent a convention of the stage
basically different from the “realistic” theatre of our
time. (353)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 As the Theatre of the Absurd is not concerned with
conveying information or presenting the problems or
destinies of characters that exist outside the author's
inner world, as it does not expound a thesis or
debate ideological propositions, it is not concerned
with the representation of events, the narration of
the fate or the adventures of characters, but instead
with the presentation of one individual's basic
situation. (354)
 It is a theatre of situation as against a theatre of
events in sequence, and therefore it uses a
language based on patterns of concrete images
rather than argument and discursive speech. (354)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The action in a play of the Theatre of the Absurd is
not intended to tell a story but to communicate a
pattern of poetic images. (354)
 To give but one example: things happen in Waiting
for Godot, but these happenings do not constitute a
plot or story; they are an image of Beckett's intuition
that nothing really ever happens in man's existence.
(354)

Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 Theatre of the Absurd has regained the freedom of
using language as merely one—sometimes
dominant, sometimes submerged—component o its
multidimensional poetic imagery. (356)
 By putting the language of a scene in contrast to the
action and reducing it to meaningless pattern, or by
abandoning discursive logic for the poetic logic of
association or assonance, the Theatre of the Absurd
has opened up a new dimension of the stage. (357)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 In the Theatre of the Absurd, on the other hand, the
audience is confronted with characters whose
motives and actions remain largely
incomprehensible. (361)
 With such characters it is almost impossible to
identify; (361)
 It presents the audience with a picture of a
disintegrating world that has lost its unifying
principle, its meaning and its purpose—an absurd
universe. (361)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 The relevant question here is not so much what is
going to happen next but, what is happening? 'What
does the action of the play represent?' (367)
 But the test of the truth of the play must lie ultimately
in its ability to communicate the truth of the
experience of the characters involved. (372)
 Ultimately, a phenomenon like the Theatre of the
Absurd does no reflect despair or a return to dark
irrational forces but expresses modern man’s
endeavour to come to terms with the world in which
he lives. (377)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 It attempts is to make him face up to the human
condition as it really is, to free him from illusions that
are bound to cause constant maladjustment and
disappointment. (377)
 For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality
in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without
fear without illusions – and to laugh at it. (377)
Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd
 That is the cause to which, in their various
individual, modest, and quixotic ways, the dramatists
of the Absurd are dedicated. (377)