Similarities between non-sense and absurd literature: challenge, deny and even deride reason, rationality and the quest for meaning. Differences: both existentialism and absurd literature is historically more recent in British culture, whereas non-sense is at least a century older and is a local tradition of British (L. Carrol, non-sense verse-limericks).
Nonsense is mainly a comic genre, a form of humor, whereas existentialism and the absurd have a tragic extent to it, are depressive.
Nonsense literature apparently constructs the same meaningless literature, but it is done while still preserving a concern for humanity, for a good-natured attitude. There is a sense of social criticism for turning them into caricatures. The excess imposed by the non-sense literature has a complex role: the tension of being British is released through non-sense literature: a form of excess accepted. The British eccentricity is another form of realizing this tension. Absurd literature has been greatly developed in the 20th-century British literature especially through plays, for example, “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. Based on the ideas of existentialism, this play is characterized by a lack of coherence where characters are full of despair, anxiety, having no meaning or purpose in life. They are confused and they spend their time doing nothing. They have a circular life, repeating the same actions each day; there is a lack of communion. They suffer from amnesia: memory is also absent, which is one of the characteristics of the traditional theatre. Another difference between the absurd theatre and traditional theatre is represented by the structure of the play: the characters do not evolve; we have no climax and no conclusion.
Time passes, but nothing happens and nobody comes. They do not know where they are or what they are waiting for. They do not know who is Godot or if he will certainly come (“He did not say for sure he’d come”) but ...