When Hector is teaching, he locks his door against Irwin , and even against the Headmaster. The History Boys. Plot Summary. Act 1 Act 2. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts.
The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of every Shakespeare play. Sign Up. Already have an account? The boys stand on the edge that separates adolescence and adulthood. With college exams and interviews around the Alan Bennett's dialogues have layers.
With college exams and interviews around the corner, the school headmaster invites two teachers to help the kids.
What starts off as a discussion in history, it broadens the way each of the boys is allowed and made to think. In a world that relies heavily on the system that manufactures and hones intelligence to perform specific duties, one of the eccentric teachers forces the boys to step out of the mundane, the rote, the known path, the traditional way of thinking, and see history for what it can be. Not what it is but what it can be. Coming from an all girls convent, there is a touch of nostalgia into it.
There are teachers Hector and Irwin who can be both wonderful and disastrous at the same time; a touch on the shoulder too long, a glance below the neck and the discussions that follow later on. Is it all innocent under the guise of something far more sinister? It is hard to ascertain. Is it a jarring experience? Bennett delivers one of his best lines: Lockwood: That's why it is a work of art in the first place.
You can't look at a Rembrandt and say 'in other words', can you sir? Touche, Mr. View all 5 comments. Oct 07, Mghulett rated it it was amazing. I've read this play at least twelve times. Same with the movie. Through out their senior year they must cram in not only facts about history, culture, and literature but they are given a new teacher who teaches them how to spice up their essays.
There are many twists in the story but i'm not going to reveal them It's one of my favorite books of all time. A very nice encounter with Mr Alan Bennett. I'm looking forward to seeing the film as well. Oct 23, Bookish Bethany rated it it was amazing. A really, really wonderful play.
The boys are so likeable and the teachers so human, so absurdly smart and full of humour. It made me laugh out loud and feel inferior - if only I could have half the knowledge of those bright boys applying for Oxford and half their desire to jest and laugh about everything! This play, sometimes intimidatingly 'well-read', is a triumphant portrait of human life and becoming.
The teachers here have lives opposing to their professional careers, they are engaging and A really, really wonderful play. The teachers here have lives opposing to their professional careers, they are engaging and full of character, they hold geniune ambition for their students, they swear and jipe and make terrible, irrevocable mistakes.
It is an important impression of intelligence and knowledge as being not only a tool to gain more, but something to be cherished, pushed and nurtured. Irwin and Dakin, especially, are interesting. Dakin, presumably good looking in scholarly yet almost thuggish way - dripping with charisma - understands and gloats in his hold over people we have all known a Dakin in our lives, painfully attractive, aware of their own intelligence, somehow pained.
Irwin, who lies about his education and never feels quite good enough is devestatingly inspiring - he has such control over the class, he encourages them to think and act as true individuals. Irwin is masterful. This play is masterful. I love how Bennett shifts between periods in time, shifts between letting the audience observe the classes and taking them into an interview format, or listening in on the teachers' gossip - all with little stage directions.
Bennett is brilliant. View 1 comment. Jul 13, stephanie rated it it was amazing Shelves: drama. View all 4 comments. May 31, Oscar Cremmen rated it really liked it. Sep 27, James Henderson rated it it was amazing Shelves: drama , favorites , read-and-reread. The play is a great read for many reasons and all of them deeply resonated with me. Most important was the devotion to the importance of language centered on the "dictionary" boy role of Posner and music and ideas, more clearly emphasized in the play than in the screenplay for the film also written by Bennett.
The play contrasts the differing perspectives on education of the two lead teachers Hector and Irwin. Without the need to "open up" demanded by film Bennett focuses on the schoolroom The play is a great read for many reasons and all of them deeply resonated with me.
Without the need to "open up" demanded by film Bennett focuses on the schoolroom and uses subtle effects to effect his dramatic purpose. One aspect of the play that stands out is the multiple narrators throughout the drama. Bennett is at his epigrammatic best and the audiences in New York showed their appreciation of this as noted by the reviews. He is successful in creating a delightful dramatic and comedic portrayal of ideas, all while evoking the spirit of bright young scholars at a key turning point in their lives.
With reference to and in the spirit of Shakespeare he dramatizes events in and outside of the classroom touching on both the desires of the heart and the wonders of imaginative young minds. The battle between educational styles centers on the approaches to teaching of the teachers Hector the idealistic humanist and Irwin practical and pragmatic.
The foundation for the boys is Mrs. Lintott's straightforward, perhaps old-fashioned, approach to teaching history which has produced "well taught" boys; however that is not enough to assure them success in achieving entrance to Oxford or Cambridge. The headmaster, in his "wisdom" adds into the mix a young teacher just up from Oxford to give the students an "edge". It is his, Mr. Irwin's, pragmatic method which uses paradox and the subjunctive. He aims to turn the historical facts upside-down, with little regard for the "truth" of the situation providing the "history boys" the ammunition to go to battle with the methods of Hector, the humanistic "general studies" teacher who attempts to enlist the boys into a conspiracy against the world and the "education" they are supposedly receiving.
Lintott: They're all clever. I saw to that. Hector: You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it. Irwin: What has that got to do with it? What has that got to do with anything? This combination, which explodes at times to produce riveting moments of theater, is what makes this play great. That and the magnificent literary style of Bennett that has continued to inspire me to this day. Jul 13, Leigh rated it really liked it Shelves: genre-drama , present , saw-film , ownership-library-books , own-film.
Can you see that? I felt that a bit. Apr 13, Sacha rated it it was amazing Shelves: adult-fiction , lgbt , play. Oct 02, Will Gillham rated it it was amazing. How a writer can cram so much wit, intelligence, and culture into one play astounds me. Reading this during my A-Levels whilst studying History it completely reflects upon the absurdity, pressure, and confusion one feels at the turning point in your life: "If they like me and they want to take me because I'm dull and ordinary I may not know much about Jean-Paul Sartre, but I've got a handicap of four.
Scripps: No. Dakin: It's consolation. All literature is consolation. I'm astounded. My feeling after reading this play. Too many boys. Too much talking uninteresting stuff. Too casual on serious topics.
Jan 03, Jack Parker rated it it was amazing. A rare re-read from me of a play I first encountered in A-level English where I was chosen to read the role of Posner in class.
Still as brilliant as it was nine years ago and one of Bennett's finest works. May 20, El rated it liked it Shelves: read-in-a-blink , 21st-centurylit , thespian-stuff. Some plays just are better when seen performed on the stage. Sometimes just reading a play loses something in the I have a feeling The History Boys is one of those. I'll bet on stage it's pretty interesting. I hear there's a movie from a few years ago that probably is worth watching.
I can't explain why but I seriously thought it might be based on this play. It was not. Silly rabbit! W Some plays just are better when seen performed on the stage.
This play is about a handful of smart British boys in a boarding school who do what boys do - talk about sex and stuff. Then there are three teachers, all of whom have completely different teaching styles, but it really comes down to who has the "better" teaching style, Hector or Irwin.
I don't even know what the purpose was of Lintott at all, other than she was the token female in the entire play. Don't get me wrong, I think education is pretty spanking important, I encourage everyone to give it a try. That being said, I'm a mediocre student myself because, whatever, man, I want to learn what I want to learn, and tests and exams don't make me a smarter person, and I am a horrible test-taker anyway.
What do grades really show you anyway? Not much, not in the long run, yet so much depends on those grades. The things I've learned on my own through my own reading outside of school has surpassed most of what I've learned while I was in school. And, well, that's pretty much the debate here in this play.
Again, I think that has more to do with the sitting-and-reading aspect, and I'd likely feel differently if I watched an actual performance. But then, I'm a visual person anyway. I gave this an extra star just for including a part from this. Mar 17, Anna rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites.
Jan 17, Skip rated it it was amazing Shelves: gay-fiction. Alan Bennett's fascinating play which was made into a well-received motion picture starring the original cast from the West End and Tony Award-winning Broadway stage productions about a group of English high school students studying for their Oxbridge entrance examinations, and how they are tutored by two different professors who possess contrasting teaching styles.
Absolutely joyful, exuberant and bittersweet at the same time, the examination of their relationships with their tutors and each Alan Bennett's fascinating play which was made into a well-received motion picture starring the original cast from the West End and Tony Award-winning Broadway stage productions about a group of English high school students studying for their Oxbridge entrance examinations, and how they are tutored by two different professors who possess contrasting teaching styles.
Absolutely joyful, exuberant and bittersweet at the same time, the examination of their relationships with their tutors and each other clues us in to their seemingly disparate personalities that somehow blend them together. I think it's cheating to count this as "reading" but it's such a treat to listen to, and I do want to hit my reading goal so Richard Griffiths, who brings so much to this audio recording. Everyone's great obviously, as was the film and the live performance surely was but Hector's longing is so much more palpable in this version.
Well that was tragic. Tragically good and soul destroying at least my fav Scripps didn't die because he is my role model. Jun 02, Roger Brunyate rated it it was amazing Shelves: sui-generis , history. Play of Ideas Although I work in the theater, I read this play with no thought of staging it, or even imagining it staged. It is just a pure play of ideas—brilliant, intriguing, often funny ideas—jostling together in a kind of imaginary space, with very little of the mechanics of stage-directions and settings.
Indeed, although I am sure that Nicholas Hytner's original staging at Britain's National Theatre and again on Broadway must have been brilliant, the description of it in the foreword sound Play of Ideas Although I work in the theater, I read this play with no thought of staging it, or even imagining it staged. Indeed, although I am sure that Nicholas Hytner's original staging at Britain's National Theatre and again on Broadway must have been brilliant, the description of it in the foreword sounds cumbersome compared to the rapid shifts in time and place that can be taken for granted on the page.
And the few minutes of the film version that I caught on television the other day just clogged the characters and situations with a lot of irrelevant detail you would not even have had on the stage. So read this play by all means, not as a stand-in for some other medium, but as an artwork in itself, as rich, free, and evocative as a poem. This study of a group of sixth-formers high-school seniors studying for entrance examinations to Oxford and Cambridge perhaps meant more to me because I share some of the background.
I will definitely recommend this book to plays, drama lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Hot Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.
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