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The History Boys
Playscript by Alan Bennett
109 pages
Published by Faber and Faber at £12.99 in hardback £8.99
in paperback
Dateline: 1st August, 2004
While many people read novels and biographies, relatively few, other
than theatre professionals are tempted to read play scripts. The
History Boys is a prime example of a text that is worth reading
for its own sake but also offers alternative pleasures.
For those that have seen a play, it is often fun to relive the experience
by reading the script soon afterwards. The joys of a wonderful evening
at the National Theatre flood back and some of those lines that one
didn't quite catch can be relished.
If people live a little too far away from London to have seen the play
then they will not get the complete experience from reading the script
and, in particular, Richard Griffiths has to be seen on stage rather
than just imagined. However, reading the words is an awful lot better
than missing out completely and with a playwright like Alan Bennett,
the philosophy and language are two major components in any of his work.
The book also provides a 23 page introduction from the almost inevitably
self-deprecating Bennett, in which he explains the genesis of the play.
The style is a delight and his wit crackles, often almost as much as
it does in the play.
The plot addresses a battle that takes place between two school teachers
with completely different philosophies. Their battleground is eight
pupils from the Oxbridge class of a grammar school in Sheffield during
the 1980s.
Hector, "his door locked against the future", is very much
the tragic hero, as he propounds his view that education is an end in
itself and throws around literary quotes with abandon. By contrast,
Irwin, 30 years his junior, has been drafted in by headmaster to introduce
a more "journalistic" approach to passing exams.
Felix, their headmaster, who is not above chasing his secretary, has
a Thatcherite win-at-all-costs attitude and with it, a high degree of
hypocrisy.
Bennett has a knack of writing quotable lines that say so much about
both his philosophy and his characters. Hector's struggle can be summed
up with his quote that "you give them the education. I give them
the will to resist it". Irwin, who will eventually become a sneering
TV historian, has a different angle "history nowadays is not a
matter of conviction, it's a performance". That says it all.
Perhaps though, it is the boys that should have the last say, as they
come to the conclusion that "most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't
happened to us yet" to which Hector retorts that poetry is for
posterity and "we're making your deathbeds here". He nearly
got it right.
This is all splendid stuff and though Bennett can be a little too schematic,
particularly with his division of teachers into three opposed classes,
the idealist, the realist and the conman, this is a splendid read. It
is not a substitute for the real thing but it adds much to the enjoyment
and understanding of the play.
Philip Fisher
You
can buy The
History Boys from our Bookshop for £7.19
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