English Literature / Drama GCSE: Characters: The History Boys by Alan Bennett

HEADMASTER:Splendid news- Posner a scholarship, Dakin an exhibition

HEADMASTER:and places for everyone else.

NARRATOR:'Eight gifted boys.'

HECTOR:You give them an education, I give them the wherewithal to resist it.

NARRATOR:'Four contrasting staff.'

DAKIN:History, is just one f[BLEEP]ing thing after another.

NARRATOR:'One famous play. These are the characters, of the history boys.

NARRATOR:'In this northern school, a battle will take place between two teachers with two different approaches - Hector and Irwin.'

IRWIN:History nowadays, is not a matter of conviction It's a performance.

NARRATOR:'Irwin is young, representative of a new generation of teachers who put results before all else.'

SCRIPPS:He's only five minutes older than we are.

NARRATOR:-'And he has a fresh, eye-catching approach.

IRWIN:If you want to learn about Mrs. Thatcher study Henry the 8th. The wrong end of the stick is the right one, a question has a front door and a back door. Go in the back, or better still, the side.

NARRATOR:'Irwin teaches the boys to be showy, to attract the eye of the examiners.'

IRWIN:Truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine tasting or fashion at a striptease.

DAKIN:We decided sir, that you were meretricious but not disingenuous.

NARRATOR:'It doesn't come naturally to some of the pupils. Least of all our narrator, Scripps.'

SCRIPPS:-It's this making it up I can't get used to. Arguing for effect, not believing what you're saying.

SCRIPPS:That's not history, that's journalism.

NARRATOR:'Irwin hasn't been entirely truthful about his own background either.

IRWIN:I never got in.

IRWIN:I was at Bristol.

IRWIN:I did go to Oxford

IRWIN:but it was just to do a teaching diploma.

NARRATOR:'His approach gets results.'

HEADMASTER:It's more than one could ever have hoped for.

HEADMASTER:Irwin, you are to be congratulated.

HEADMASTER:Remarkable achievement.

NARRATOR:'But maybe he, like his pupils, is inadequately prepared for life and incapable of decisive action when Dakin offers him relations.'

DAKIN:Why are you so bold in argument and talking but when it comes to the point, when it's something that's actually happening, I mean now, you're so f[BLEEP]ing careful.

-Yaah, chez monsieur la director!

NARRATOR:'His opponent is Hector, a teacher of the old school.'

HEADMASTER:There is passion there, or as I prefer to call it, commitment, but not all curriculum directed, not curriculum directed at all.

POSNER:Literature is medicine, wisdom, elastoplast, everything.

IRWIN:He was a good man, but I do not think there is time for his kind of teaching anymore.

HEADMASTER:-Your teaching, however effective it may or may not have been has always seemed to me to be… selfish.

HEADMASTER:Less about the interests of the boys than some cock-eyed notion you have about culture!

NARRATOR:'Hector certainly seems to have lost the joy of teaching.'

HECTOR:What made me p[BLEEP] my life away in this god forsaken place.

HECTOR:There's nothing of me left.

NARRATOR:'But he still manages to retain the affection of the boys even after groping them.'

HECTOR:It was a laying on of hands, I don't deny that

HECTOR:but more in benediction than gratification or anything else.

MRS LINTOTT:A grope, is a grope. It is not the enunciation, you TWERP.

NARRATOR:'This, is Mrs. Lintott. A plain talking, confidant to the staff with a wry sense of humour.'

MRS LINTOTT:Unsurprisingly, I am Tott, or Totty. Some irony there, one feels.

NARRATOR:'She certainly knows the responsibility the role carries.'

MRS LINTOTT:One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.

MRS LINTOTT:One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is… not to try and tell them.

NARRATOR:'Her no nonsense approach to life is mirrored in her lessons, which are factual and uncomplicated.'

RUDGE:Firm foundations type thing. Point a, point b, point c. Mr Irwin's more free range.

NARRATOR:'A feminist in an all boys school, she has to fight to make the female voice heard.'

MRS LINTOTT:I hesitate to mention this, lest it should occasion a sophisticated groan but it might not have crossed your minds, that one of the dons who interviews you may be a woman.

NARRATOR:'But her voice is marginalised just like that of women in history.'

MRS LINTOTT:History's not such a frolic for women as it is for men. Why should it be? They never get round the conference table.

NARRATOR:'The headmaster excludes her from participating in the Oxbridge teaching. leaving her a neutral observer on the battle between hector and Irwin.'

HEADMASTER:We are low in the league. I wanna see us up there with Manchester Grammar, Haberdashers' Aske's, Leighton Park or is that an open prison? No matter.

NARRATOR:'He's aspirational, a snob.'

HEADMASTER:When did we last have anyone in history at Oxford and Cambridge?

NARRATOR:'A comical figure really.'

HEADMASTER:Oh err, Qu'est-ce que c'est passé, ici? Porquoi c'est garcon… Dakin isn't it? Sans ces trousers?!

NARRATOR:'His hypocrisy makes him an object of mockery amongst teachers and students alike.'

MRS LINTOTT:Our headmaster is a [BLEEP].

DAKIN:I asked him what the difference was between Hector touching us up on the bike and him trying to feel up Fiona.

NARRATOR:'Dakin is the leader, and the most promiscuous of all the boys.

NARRATOR:'Confident in his own sex appeal–'

DAKIN:'Course she likes me.

NARRATOR:'and how to use it to get what he wants, manipulating both Hector and Irwin.'

DAKIN:…beginning to get it. Turning facts on their head. It's like a game.

IRWIN:I didn't know you were that way inclined.

DAKIN:I don't understand it. I have never wanted to please anybody the way I do him,

DAKIN:girls not excepted.

NARRATOR:'But ultimately, he ends up disillusioned, as he discovers that Irwin's teaching methods are deceptive 'and not indicative of his real-life behaviour.'

DAKIN:Reckless, impulsive, immoral.

DAKIN:How come there's such a difference between the way you teach and the way you live?

POSNER:I love Dakin.

IRWIN:Does Dakin know?

POSNER:Yes. He doesn't think it's surprising but Dakin likes girls basically.

NARRATOR:'Posner is a character who seems to relish in the pain of his unrequited love.'

POSNER:Yes it's only a phase, who says I want it to pass? But the pain, the pain.

NARRATOR:'It seems Posner is destined to be an outsider, not only from his own community but also from his fellow pupils.'

POSNER:All my life I've been one of those squatting at the front. I don't care about Oxford and Cambridge I'd just like to graduate to a chair.

NARRATOR:'Hector doesn't even pick him to ride Pillion. He even fails to fit in at Cambridge.'

POSNER:All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere but then I found I had to go on.

NARRATOR:'So ultimately, it's Posner who shows the failure of Irwin's methods, for he ends up unprepared for, and failing, in life.'

HEADMASTER:One oddity, Rudge. Determined to try for Oxford and Christchurch, of all places. No hope. Might get in at Loughborough, in a bad year.

NARRATOR:'Rudge is the dimmest of the bright young things. An apparent no-hoper.'

RUDGE:Look, I'm sh[BLEEP] at all this. Sorry. If they like me and they want to take me, they'll take me 'cause I'm dull and ordinary. I'm no good in interviews but I got enough chat to get me 'round a golf course.

RUDGE:Maybe, there'll be someone on the board who wants to go round a golf course.

NARRATOR:'Rudge is the one who exposes the headmaster's pretentions as nonsense, for he gains Oxbridge admission not by academic prowess but by family connections.

NARRATOR:'Finally, Scripps.

NARRATOR:'He acts as narrator, breaking the fourth wall. Introducing scenes and revealing the thoughts of other characters.'

SCRIPPS:-Posner did not say it, since he seldom took his eyes off Dakin he knew that Irwin looked at him occasionally too and he wanted him to say so.

NARRATOR:-'An observer, he watches the action, rather than taking part. Suiting his eventual career as a journalist.'