hilosophies about the human condition. Existentialists emphasize freedom of choice and personal responsibility but who regards human existence in a hostile universe as unexplainable. Martin Eeaslin (who wrote the 'Theatre of the Absurd') explains that Absurdist Theatre explores the fact that ' ...ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world'.
             The play opens as a fairy tale and ends as a parable of despair. The only joy in this play is based on an illusion. Lear depicts a pitiless world where men look to the heavens but find only a void. Lear ultimately finds comfort in Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, Gloucester, and his Fool.At the end, Lear ultimately triumphs over cosmic aloofness and, indeed, creates something out of nothing.
             'Do you see this? Look at her! Look, her lips! Look there! Look there!'
             The presence of the absurd is exemplified throughout the course of the play. Lear's descent into madness hinted at the beginning of the play where he grasps exressions of love to his heart, and resigns his sceptre to a chorus of acclamations, is childish. As the king he then represents greatness linked to puerility. The fool points out the absurdity of each situation, and the potentialities of comedy. Lastly the mock trial of Lear's daughters, and the 'macabre humouresque' of Gloucester's blinding.
             There are two scenes in particular that reinforces the theories of existentialism. The first of which is Gloucester's Dover Scene: Even as Edgar's lie deters his father from suicide, it tells the audience that the gods are creatures of man's imagination and that believers are blind.Gloster's suicide has a meanng only if the gods exist. If there are no gods, suicide makes no sense. It is a surrender, which becomes the acceptance of the world's cruelty.The tragic ending is another example. Cordelia's death is viewed as 'the last hideous, joke of destiny' which Lear must witness just as he is at the point of regaining his sanity, thus destroying...