Irwin - A Level Lang/Lit - Home
The History Boys: Revision guideThemesThemes have been broken down into sections with quotes relating to each characters position within these themes.History (different views/representations of)As the play’s title suggests, one of Bennett’s main preoccupations in The History Boys is the subject of history. The character of Irwin is representative of many modern historians in search of untrodden ground. Irwin teaches his boys to take some hitherto unquestioned historical assumption and prove the opposite. Using this theory, Irwin makes the short leap from history teacher to journalist to government spin-doctor, whose job it is to prove that the loss of trial by jury does not impinge on civil liberties, but instead broadens them.For Irwin, history is not a matter of conviction, and he encourages the boys to be dispassionate, to distance themselves. This is a theory which works well when he is teaching the Reformation, but causes controversy when the class moves on to discuss the Holocaust. In a key scene, Irwin, Hector and the boys argue over whether the Holocaust should be studied, and if so, how. Whilst Hector’s approach – to perceive the Holocaust as an unprecedented horror – may seem typically naive, Posner points out that to put the Holocaust ‘in context is a step towards saying that it can be… explained. And if it can be explained then it can be explained away.’ The History Boys highlights the responsibility of the historian, and asks questions about the approach the historian should take in studying the past.(See the extension sheet on references for further information)Quotations‘How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another’?( Rudge-85)‘History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.’ (Mrs Lintott-85)‘ History is women following behind with the bucket.” (Mrs Lintott-80)“[talking about the Holocaust]'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.''But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.’‘It's subjunctive history.’ ‘ You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.’ (Dakin-90)‘History nowadays is not a matter of conviction.It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so.’?(Irwin-35)‘History’s not such a frolic for women as for men. Why should it be? They never get round the conference table’ (Mrs Lintott-84)‘Story-telling, so much of it, which is what men do naturally (Mrs Lintott-22) ‘…having taught you all history on a strictly non-gender orientated basis I just wonder if it occurs to any of you how dispiriting this can be?’ (Mrs Lintott-83)Education (The purpose of)The play begins as the boys return to school after receiving their A level results and follows them as they set to preparing in earnest for the entrance examinations for Oxford. While Hector insists throughout the play that his lessons are to guide the boys in life, the Headmaster and Irwin have differing educational goals. Their plan is to teach the boys how to pass the test, to give their work polish and make them stand out. The History Boys pits these duelling philosophies on education—learning for life and learninghow to pass a test—against one another, encouraging us to examine what truly is most practical in our own educational system.Quotes‘…or what’s all this learning by heart for, except as some sort of insurance against the boys’ ultimate failure?’(Mrs Lintott-69)‘Turning facts on their head. It’s like a game.’(Dakin-80)‘I would call it grooming did not that have overtones of the monkey house.‘Presentation’ might be the word’(Headmaster-8)And they are bright, brighter than last year’s. But that’s not enough apparently’ (Mrs Lintott-10)‘…teachers just remember the books they loved as students’ and shove them on the syllabus’ (Mrs Lintott-23)Irwin‘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... Flee the crowd... History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so. (38)‘Education isn’t something for when they’re old and grey and sitting by the fire. It’s for now. The exam is next month.’ (49)‘I sympathise with your feelings about examinations, but they are a fact of life (48)‘Dakin: Like Mr Hector’s lessons then, sir. They’re a waste of time, too.Irwin: Yes, you little smart arse, but he’s not trying to get you through an exam. (38)‘…truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine-tasting or fashion at a striptease.’ (26)Hector‘It’s to make us more rounded human beings’ (Timms-38)‘Hector never bothered with what he was educating those boys for’ (Mrs Lintott-107)‘Akthar:It’s just the knowledge, sir.Timms:The pursuit of it for its own sake, sir.’(37)‘Hector:All knowledge is precious, whether or not it serves the slightest human use’. (4-7)Hector: … proudly jingling your A Levels, those longed-for emblems of your conformity, you have come before me once again to resume your education... A Levels... are credentials, qualifications, the footings of your CV. Your Cheat’s Visa. (4)‘Headmaster: Mr Hector has an old-fashioned faith in the redemptive power of words. (49)‘Mrs Lintott: Forgive Hector. He is trying to be the kind of teacher pupils will remember. Someone they will look back on.’‘You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it’ (Hector-23)WomenWomen are completely side-lined in the play, but this doesn’t mean that the role of women could not come up as a theme.It could be said that they are significant by their absence.Women in the play are side-lined just as they are in society and education as a whole.Mrs Lintott is the only women with a voice in this play.Quotes“History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.” (Mrs Lintott-85)‘…the predilections and preoccupations of men. They kick their particular stone along the street and I watch.’(Mrs Lintott-68)‘Women so seldom get a turn for a start. Elizabeth I less remarkable for her abilities than that, unlike most if her sisters, she did get the chance to exercise them (Mrs Lintott-83)‘…and that I should be assumed to be so discreet is in itself condescending. I’m what men would call a safe pair of hands’ (Mrs Lintott-68/69)‘…a feminine approach to things: rueful, accepting, taking things as you find them (Mrs Lintott-84)‘It’s not our fault, miss. It’s just the way it is.’ (Timms-84)‘…there are no women historians on TV, it’s because they don’t get carried away for a start, and they don’t come bounding up to you with every new historical notion they come up with…’ (Mrs Lintott-84)Women as sex objects:‘Lecher though one is, or aspires to be, it occurs to me that the lot of women cannot be easym who must suffer such inexpert male fumblings, virtually on a daily basis.’ (Dakin-77)‘chases her round the desk hoping to cop a feel’ (Dakin-29)‘She’s my western front. Last night for instance, meeting only token resistance. I reconnoitred the ground…’ (Dakin-28)‘I asked [the headmaster] what the difference was between Hector touching us up on the bike and him trying to feel up Fiona (Dakin-102)POETRY AND LITERATUREAt first glance, The History Boys appears to be just one reference after another. If the boys or Hector are not quoting Auden, they are performing scenes from Shakespeare, or from 1950s films. Hector is the main representative of this theme.For Hector, poetry and literature are part of his preparing the boys for life. When Timms complains that he doesn’t always understand poetry, Hector says: ‘Read it now, learn it now, and you’ll know it whenever. We’re making our deathbeds here boys.’Hector sees poetry as a way of understanding life, making sense of the endlessly complicated world. Posner says he sees literature as ‘elastoplast’, and when confronted by the headmaster about his behaviour on the motorbike, Hector comments this is ‘just the time’ for poetry. Irwin, on the other hand, has a different use in mind. Soon after arriving at the school, he sees the boys have this amazing resource of quotations; ‘gobbets’ that could be used to make their ailing essays more interesting to the examiner who will decide if they are offered a place at university or not. Lockwood describes Mr Hector’s stuff as‘nobler’ than what the boys learn with Mr Irwin, but Hector himself describes it as a waste of time. During the course of the play, the boys change from being very resistant to Mr Irwin’s teaching style to embracing it fully. Even Rudge says all the right things at his interview – ‘Wilfred Owen was a wuss and Stalin was a sweetie’.However, it is Hector who is given the last line in the play. His often-criticised teaching methods are given a defence: ‘Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me,not for you but for someone, somewhere,one day.’(See the extension sheet on references for further information)Quotes‘Poetry is good up to a point. Adds flavour’ (Irwin-26)‘…They’re being learned by heart. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order. (Hector-48)‘It’s not education. It’s culture (Akthar-39)“I don't always understand poetry!' (Timms-40)'You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it... whenever.” (Hector-40)“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours”?(Hector-56)InnocenceThe History Boys deals quite heavily with the issue of growing up. Not only does the future of the boys hang in the balance with the entrance exams, but the school’s reputation lies squarely upon their shoulders. As Hector and Irwin battle over educational ideologies, the boys become aware of how the world works, no longer simply clinging to route memorization of facts and quotes. They are forced to stepoutside of their childlike innocence and stake claim to a more critical and cynical assessment of their surroundings. The play also takes on the issue of sexual identity, as the boys deal simultaneously with Hector’s sexual abuse and the confusion of trying to find their own identities.THE ‘FIDDLING’One of the liveliest discussions we had in rehearsals was on the subject of what Hectordoes with the boys on the motorbike. In the hands of a different playwright, the image of a teacher touching his students’ genitals would be sinister, if not downright disturbing, but in The History Boys it becomes a source of amusement for the boys – at least until it proves to be Hector’s undoing and the end of his teaching career. Part of the reason we are not disturbed by Hector’s actions, either as a reader of the play or as an audience member, is because Hector does not force himself on the boys. He offers them a lift home which they are free to decline or accept, knowing what they are agreeing to. Far from being forced into sexual contact against their will, Dakin even goes so far as to say he wishes Hector would ‘just go for it’. The motorbike is another reason why the fiddling is benign rather than threatening. The fact that this all takes place on the back of a moving vehicle creates a humorous rather than sinister picture. Alan Bennett explained where this idea came from. Once, as a teenager, he was hitchhiking in Wales, and was picked up by a passing motorcyclist. As they sped along,Alan became aware that the motorcyclist was reaching behind in order to touch hispassenger’s crotch. When he realised that Alan was not interested, the man pulled over, and left him in the middle of nowhere, near a deserted quarry. Alan Bennett laughed as he told us the anecdote, and we laughed too – his natural sense of humour brushed away any idea that Hector abuses his position of power, or that the boys would be ‘scarred for life’.‘Are we scared for life, do you think’ (Dakin-77)HOPE AND FAILUREThe theme of hope and failure plays a large part in The History Boys. Whilst the boys seem to have everything to live for – the rest of their lives ahead of them – Hector, and to an extent Mrs Lintott, are placed in stark contrast. Theirs is a life of failedambition. Mrs Lintott asks the boys if they realise how dispiriting it is to teach ‘five centuries of masculine ineptitude’. She does not think of herself as bold, as she confesses in Act Two. Hector tells Irwin not to teach: ‘It ought to renew… the young mind; warm, eager, trusting; instead comes… a kind of coarsening. You start to clown. Plus a fatigue that passes for philosophy but is nearer to indifference.’ Even Posner, an exceptionally bright student who is later awarded a scholarship,goes on to drop out of university, and ‘has periodic breakdowns. He haunts the locallibrary and keeps a scrapbook of the achievements of his one-time classmates’.The theme of loneliness recurs throughout much of Bennett’s writing, and is particularly apparent in his series of monologues Talking Heads. The former Director of the National Theatre, Richard Eyre, has described Bennett’s writing as ‘‘all about unrealised hope and defeated expectations’’. It could be argued that just as Hardy’s‘Drummer Hodge’ reaches out and touches the hands of Posner and Hector, so Bennett’scharacters’ feelings of isolation and loneliness, touch his audience.Main CharactersHectorHector is the focus of more scenes than any other character, it is his life which is celebrated in the final scene of the play and it is his words which provide the conclusion to the piece.What is obvious from the scenes in the classroom is the depth of the bond between Hector and the boys. He knows them as individuals and the class, individually and collectively, regard him as much more than just one of the teachers they have encountered in their school careers. It is not hard to see why this should be so. His erudition is such as to appear not in any way a kind of showing off by an adult before impressionable young people but a manifestation of someone for whom literature has always provided the truest and most dependable source of wisdom and guidance in life. His enthusiasm for writing and writers is infectious and we see on numerous occasions the boys’ ability and readiness to contribute quotations and references of their own in discussions with him and with Irwin, a trait which the latter appears to find more than a trifle unsettling. As Mrs Lintott states about Hector and the effect he has on students, He impinges (p. 50).Although there is a seeming lack of direction and purpose to Hector’s lessons, yet the very fact that the boys appear to have previously studied English with him at A Level and done well suggests that his methods cannot have been totally unfocused. Even in the set-piece of the General Studies ‘brothel-scene’ (pp. 12–16), he insists that the students use the conditional or subjunctive forms in their French. In other words, Hector has the enviable knack of ‘sugaring the pill’, of making learning fun. Of course, this involves taking risks and the success of this approach is dependent upon the trust established between the teacher and the class. This bond is apparent in the way the boys show, initially at least, a reluctance to respond positively to Irwin’s encouraging them to use every available piece of knowledge, including literary works, in their Oxbridge History examinations, the irony in their voices on p. 39 notwithstanding:Akthar:We couldn’t do that, sir.That would be a betrayal of trust.Laying bare our souls, sir.Lockwood:Is nothing sacred, sir?We’re shocked.The seemingly anarchic approach to teaching and learning is troubling to Irwin, who keeps asking the boys about what actually happens in Hector’s lessons and complains to Hector himself (p. 48) and to the Headmaster (p. 49) about the reluctance of the boys to utilise their Hector-inspired knowledge in the context of the preparation for the imminent examinations. Less surprisingly, the Headmaster is frustrated in his attempts to classify the gifts of the English teacher within the established framework, complaining that his methods are unpredictable and unquantifiable and in the current educational climate that is no use (p. 67).The scene in which Hector discusses the Thomas Hardy poem Drummer Hodge with Posner (pp. 53–56) is one of the most moving in the play and shows to us, in beautifully written naturalistic language, a side of Hector which is quite different from the exuberant classroom performer. His spontaneous explication of the poem and its celebration of the short life of the young soldier is that of the natural teacher who exudes warmth and sensitivity alongside literary insight. The lines in which he talks to Posner of the best moments in reading (p. 56) are, arguably, the finest in the whole play.Hector is not afraid to express his distaste for the kind of utilitarian approach to learning epitomised by Irwin. He winces at Irwin’s use of the word gobbets to describe the handy little quotes that can be trotted out to make a point:Hector:Oh, it would be useful... every answer a Christmas tree hung with the appropriate gobbets. Except that they’re learnt by heart. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order.(p. 48)Likewise, Hector is appalled at the idea of a phenomenon like the Holocaust being taught in school just like any other topic:Hector:They go on school trips nowadays, don’t they? Auschwitz. Dachau. What has always concerned me is where do they eat their sandwiches? Drink their coke?Crowther:The visitors’ centre. It’s like anywhere else.Hector:Do they take pictures of each other there? Are they smiling? Do they hold hands? Nothing is appropriate. Just as questions on an examination paper are inappropriate.How can the boys scribble down an answer however well that doesn’t demean the suffering involved?And putting it well demeans it as much as putting it badly.Irwin:It’s a question of tone, surely. Tact.Hector:Not tact. Decorum. (p. 71)It could be said that Hector’s high moral tone here is tinged with a degree of jealousy at the thought of his position as the boys’ favourite teacher being threatened by the arrival of the younger man who has his own idiosyncratic ways with which to impress their young minds. Equally, his dismissal of the practical application of knowledge, including in examinations, can be seen as something of an indulgence. He owes his position as a teacher, after all, to the qualifications he possesses and in decrying the competitive nature of the university entrance, not least to Oxbridge for those, like the boys here, with no established tradition in their families, he is ignoring a large slice of their current reality.Self-indulgence and a wilful ignoring of reality are charges which might equally be laid against Hector (and the playwright?) with regard to his conduct with selected boys on his motorcycle trips. Despite the existence of his somewhat unexpected wife (p. 41), Hector’s homosexual proclivities are not in doubt. What is in question is the wisdom of his establishing the tradition of riding home on the motorcycle accompanied by one of the boys on the pillion seat, with groping of their private parts as part of the package. The boys are prepared to indulge him, with varying degrees of reluctance, as a manifestation of their devotion to him, but, when his behaviour is exposed, both the Headmaster (pp. 52–53) and Mrs Lintott (p. 95) are both surely right to dismiss his claims that what took place was something profound. In his choice of boys, Hector has been snobbishly selective, never picking the physically slight Posner, ironically the one homosexual student amongst them. Dakin insists that Hector’s a joke...That side of him is (p. 101). The truth is, surely, that Hector, in attempting to relieve some of the physical frustration resultant from his life as a closet homosexual, has exploited his position with the boys. Though the play presents the student participants like Scripps and Dakin as being cheerfully unscarred by the experience, in reality things could have been quite different.In the latter stages of the play, the fragility of Hector’s world which lies behind the persona he sustains in the classroom is revealed. On p. 65 he shocks the boys with an outburst expressing the disgust he feels towards his own life:Hector:Shut up! All of you.SHUT UP, you mindless fools.What made me piss my life away in this god-forsaken place? There’s nothing of me left. Go away. Class dismissed. Go.Later, on pp. 94–95, he confides to Irwin, whom he perhaps sees as, in some respects, his younger self, differences of educational philosophy notwithstanding, how teaching has led to a kind of coarsening of the spirit, trapping the self in the fixed role as clown, until the falsity of the situation makes the boys become merely work. He warns Irwin against becoming involved with Dakin, to whom he can see the younger teacher is attracted, advising him instead to sublimate such feelings, with the occasional booster, a process which can last you a lifetime.We see Hector as very much a flawed hero. However much devotion and loyalty he may inspire amongst his students and however enlightened his approach to education and teaching, he knows that he has paid a high price for living through his work. From a generation for whom the more liberal, post-1960s climate, in terms of attitudes to homosexuality, came too late in life, he has channelled his suppressed sexual energies into his life in the classroom. His close – and, on the motorcycle, dangerous – relationships with his students and his immersion in the world of literature have, until now, allowed him to cope with what is, by his own estimation, an unsatisfactory and unsatisfying existence. Despite this, it is Hector whose life is celebrated at the end of the play, by students and colleagues whose lives he has touched, in many cases profoundly. Like many a hero from literature, it is his inner turmoil which gives his character substance and humanity.Quotes‘I am an old man in a dry season’ (66)‘Hector is a mad of studied eccentricity.’(stage direction-4)‘Your teaching, however effective it may or may not have been, has always seemed to me to be selfish…’(53)‘Child, I am your teacher. Whatever I do in this room is a token of my trust. I am in your hands. It is a pact. Bread eaten in secret’ (6)‘It’s locked against the Forces of Progress, Sir’ (36)‘…as he dropped you at the corner, your honour still intact’ (77)‘He was a good man, but I do not think there is time for his kind of teaching anymore.’ (109)‘He was stained and shabby and did unforgivable things but he led you to expect the best.’ (107)IrwinTo an extent, Irwin exists as a counterpoint to Hector and his ultra-liberal approach in the classroom, providing the embodiment of the opposite extreme in the debate on educational values which underpins much of the play. Whilst Hector purports to despise the pursuit of examination success, Irwin’s whole strategy as a teacher of History to the boys as they prepare for their Oxbridge entrance examinations is to encourage them to find and adopt positions on historical phenomena as much opposed to orthodox interpretations as possible, so as to impress their examiners with their supposed originality and freshness of insight. Whilst his initial use of ‘shock tactics’ with the boys, including his disparaging of their written work and the mention of the fourteen foreskins of Christ (p. 18), do not overly impress them, his influence upon them grows perceptively. Dakin, who had originally dismissed Irwin’s iconoclasm as a predictable attempt to show he’s still in the game (p. 21), is the one who feels himself coming to appreciate the new teacher’s ways, including his continued and provocative insistence on the mediocrity of his work. Bennett never portrays Irwin as a ridiculous figure. His emphasis on the need for the boys to produce answers which go well beyond the merely competent, using any means – Turning facts upon their head, as Dakin puts it (p. 80) – and scraps of knowledge in order to stand out from their competitors, may offend a purist like Hector, but it is a tactic grounded in an appreciation of the realities of Oxbridge entrance procedures. Irwin knows – perhaps from painful personal experience, given that he admits to Dakin that his own application to Oxford ended in failure (p. 99) – that the dons are likely to be impressed with unorthodox approaches, seeing them as signs of the much-prized capacity for independence of thought. State school candidates like the boys in the class need to be able to compete with those whose family and class backgrounds have afforded them greater opportunities to obtain a veneer of academic sophistication. The success of the applications proves the efficacy of Irwin’s approach. In this sense, we could say that Irwin has the best interests of the boys at heart and proves to have made a telling contribution to their quest for academic and social betterment.The play does, however, give us glimpses of darker, less admirable sides to Irwin. Whilst his encouraging of the boys to manipulate historical material might be, in the context of the highly competitive Oxbridge entry procedures, understandable and justifiable, we are shown in the scenes from his post-teaching career that he has extended this extreme pragmatism into later life. His television persona again uses dubious shock tactics in order to impress his mass audience, whilst, in the first scene of the play, his later position at the heart of government shows him distorting language in a cynical ploy to pull the wool over the eyes of the electorate. The calculating nature of Irwin can, perhaps, be recognised in the school scenes not only in his approach to the teaching of History but in the way he keeps asking the boys about what happens in Hector’s lessons, how they come to know lines of poetry by heart and why they are not prepared to contemplate the use of knowledge gained with Hector in his own lessons. Out of the classroom, Irwin appears much more diffident than when in front of the group, seeming unsettled by the very idea of Hector’s spontaneity and the apparently unstructured nature of his approach to teaching and learning. It is as if he cannot understand this very antithesis of his own clearly focused, goal-driven outlook. When Irwin, in the final scene, opines that Hector was a good man, but I do not think that there is time for his kind of teaching anymore (p. 109), one feels that this is stated with some degree of satisfaction. The future, he must recognise, belongs to such as himself. The fact that he survives the accident which killed Hector is, perhaps, symbolic of the fading of the old liberal ethos in the world of education, to be replaced by one much more hardened and suited to the modern era.There remains the question of Irwin’s sexuality. He is, of course, one of three characters in the play who are seen to express their homosexual identities in different ways. Where Hector indulges in furtive fumblings on the motorcycle, talking sententiously of the laying on of hands, and Posner’s open displays of adolescent yearning for Dakin are replaced by hints of profound unhappiness in adulthood, Irwin initially seems to wish to hide his true nature. Though, significantly, it is to him that Posner turns to talk of his own burgeoning homosexual feelings, the young teacher is careful, as he tells Mrs Lintott, not to give any idea of that he might be in the same boat (p. 42). Posner, however, can see only too clearly that Irwin himself is attracted to Dakin and, when that supremely confident student makes his advances to him, Irwin’s cool handling of the loaded language about the invasion of Poland (pp. 89–90) is followed by a more active response to Dakin’s more blatant suggestions on pp. 99–102. The fact that it has taken an approach from a younger, heterosexual person for Irwin to emerge from a situation which Dakin describes as a kind of lying (p. 99) is significant. The accident which kills Hector prevents any further development of the situation and we might presume that, in later life, Irwin has reverted to conducting his sexual life in a discreet, if not covert, fashion. Bennett is, perhaps, suggesting that Irwin’s inherent dishonesty as to his real sexual identity is part of an overall and abiding lack of integrity about this figure.Quotes‘You are very young. Grow a moustache.’ (12)‘Have a heart. He’s only five minutes older than we are (21)‘I enjoyed your programmes but they were more journalism than history. What you call yourself now you’re in politics I’m not sure.’ (108)‘…How come there’s such a difference between the way you teach and the way you live?’ (100)‘I did go to Oxford, but it was just to do a teaching diploma.’ (99)Mrs LintottAlthough Mrs Lintott – Dorothy – is not given as many lines as Hector or Irwin, she does play an important role within the play, not only as the only female character but also as a teacher who does not indulge in either of the extremes of classroom practice associated with her two colleagues. She is obviously a more than competent teacher, the boys having gained high A Level grades in History under her tutelage. She doesn’t particularly involve herself directly in the struggle of ideas (and egos) between Hector and Irwin, not making undue protestations at the Headmaster’s assumption that the boys need more than she can give them if their Oxbridge applications are to be successful. She does not believe in showing too much of a human face in front of the students and realises that she will never impinge (p. 50) on the lives of the boys in the way Hector does, not that, in all probability, she would want to.In conversations with colleagues, she adopts a tone of wry detachment, always ready to spot and deflate with sardonic humour any manifestations of pomposity, as with the Headmaster, or the tendency which she sees in Hector towards casting a romantic sheen over his own repressed sexual longings. There is an obvious warmth between these two old colleagues, but Dorothy is rightly disinclined to see Hector’s behaviour on the motorcycle as anything less than foolishness. We might assume that she has been wounded by her husband’s desertion of her (p. 22) and that her impatience with masculine pretence is one consequence of this. She talks sympathetically with Irwin, giving him various bits of advice on how to deal with situations, without ever being condescending or overbearing.Dorothy is a woman in the man’s world of the boys’ grammar school and understandably finds dispiriting (p. 83) the unspoken assumption of the boys and her two teaching colleagues that the Oxbridge interviewing process would be an all-male affair. In the same scene, her expressions of frustration extend to the experience of teaching five centuries of masculine ineptitude (p. 84). History as it is recorded and studied, she insists, is essentially a male view on a world where males have a virtual monopoly on power:Mrs Lintott:‘...History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.What is History? History is women following behind with the bucket.’ (p. 85)This is the one instance in the play when Dorothy allows her mask of irony to slip, allowing us to see a more passionate side to a character who, for the most part, prefers to remove herself from the fray. She is the bedrock of education, as women are the bedrock of history. Quotes‘they know their stuff. Plainly stated and properly organised facts need no presentation, surely (8-10)‘One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.’ (42)‘You’ve force-fed us the facts; now we’re in the process of running around acquiring flavour.’ (Rudge-33)Their A levels are very good. And that is thanks to you’ (Headmaster-8)The HeadmasterThe Headmaster – Felix – is arguably not so much a character as a caricature. Unlike Bennett’s approach to the other teachers, there is no attempt on the writer’s part to ‘flesh out’ the monochrome portrait of an officious autocrat who is only too happy to play the number-crunching games associated with the modern world of education. There are no shades of grey or ambiguities in this figure, who serves as the butt of much of the comedy within the play. His desire for enhanced numbers gaining Oxbridge entry from his school has, one feels, less to do with a cherishing of academic excellence or a genuine concern to see boys from ‘ordinary’ backgrounds break through into the hitherto privileged worlds of Oxford and Cambridge than a need to bask in the reflected glory that accompanies such success. His speech is riddled with ridiculous attempts to sound ‘hip’, whilst in conversation with his teachers he is inevitably patronising or dismissive. Even Irwin, chosen especially to be the agent of the revolution guaranteeing Oxbridge success, is treated without real respect, being urged to grow a moustache in order to improve his discipline with the boys (p. 12). He is contemptuous of Hector’s old-fashioned faith in the redemptive power of words (p. 49) but, like a true hypocrite, is happy to speak in glowing terms of just this quality at the English teacher’s memorial service (p. 106). The only indications of a private life are the mentions of his wife’s working in a charity shop, from where she observes Hector’s behaviour on the motorcycle, and Dakin’s awareness of his being a rival for the sexual favours of Fiona, the school secretary. In his defence, it could be argued that Felix is merely accommodating to the spirit of the age. Like any head of an educational establishment, he would feel under pressure from a variety of sources – local and national governments, school governors, parents, ambitious students, local media etc. – to produce results in terms of examination success and Oxbridge entry. Whilst there is a touch of the grotesque in the portrayal of this figure by Bennett, Felix serves perhaps an indication of the destructive and dehumanising effect of the modern application to the realm of education of criteria imported from the harsh, competitive world of business and commerce. Quotes‘…the chief enemy of culture in any school is always the Headmaster (Mrs Lintott-50)‘I was a geographer. I went to Hull.’ (11)‘But I am thinking league tables.’ (8)The BoysThere are eight boys in the seventh-term Oxbridge class but it is fair to say that, whilst Bennett has given them a strong group identity, he has individualised three of them, leaving the rest to blend into the collective background.As a group, the boys show a suitably irreverent attitude towards both Hector and Irwin. With the first, this is all part of the complex relationship which exists between teacher and students. Their devotion to him, based presumably on previous years of his teaching methods, is evinced by the warmth of the atmosphere which exists in his classes, by their shared enjoyment of both canonical literature and the films of his own youth, and, more darkly, their willingness to indulge in the ritual abuse on his motorcycle. With Irwin, they show an initial resistance to both his rather obvious attempts to shock them into attention but gradually become more appreciative of his emphasis on the need for presenting unorthodox cases in their entrance examinations. In all the classroom scenes, they show an impressive – many would say unrealistic – familiarity with works of both literature and historical issues. Throughout the play, they display a mixture of youthful promise mixed with the wariness of their generation towards the claims of both established authority and its would-be alternatives. Scripps is, in many ways, the most sympathetically drawn character amongst them. It is he who is quick to join in the games based upon classic films by providing suitable piano accompaniment or acting a role, he joins in the brothel scene, can produce a literary quotation readily and knows how to pronounce Nietzsche. He is happy to admit to Dakin his own decision to involve himself in Christian belief and worship, but he wears this commitment lightly, cheerfully accepting the ribald responses of his friend, who has much more secular tastes. Scripps is given the final lines of appreciation for the life of Hector, contradicting Irwin’s assertion that his methods were no longer appropriate by insisting that Love apart, it is the only education worth having (p. 109). It is a mark of Scripps’ seniority, as it were, that Bennett entrusts him with the role of narrator at various points in the play, as if he were the one person most able, both then and later, to appreciate the full implications of what was happening. He seems to be reasonably well-adjusted in adulthood, his career as a journalist on a quality newspaper providing an appropriate outlet for his capacity for serious reflection, with the possibilities existing of his turning to more creative work.Posner is, as Mrs Lintott states in the final scene of the play, ... of all Hector’s boys... the only one who truly took everything to heart, remembers everything he was ever taught... the songs, the sayings, the endings; the words of Hector never forgotten (p. 108). It is significant that he turns up for Hector’s tutorial on poetry whilst Dakin defaults, preferring to look over old examination papers. He goes on to share with the teacher a moving scene in which they are united in their appreciation of Hardy’s verse, as well, perhaps, as by their common sense of exclusion from the heterosexual mainstream. Posner does not attempt to hide his sexuality and, though his passion for Dakin is a source of anguish, his capacity for self-mockery prevents him being too distraught over it, at least initially. Posner gets into his chosen Oxbridge college by slavishly following Irwin’s system of turning received ideas on their head in the entrance examination, which in his case involves him, a Jew, writing about the Holocaust with what the dons praise as a sense of detachment (p. 96). He is prepared to deny his heritage and his better judgement in order to impress. Ultimately, Posner is unable to cope with the adult world, cutting a tragic figure in the first and last scenes of Act Two. He is undone, arguably, by this same inability to assert any true identity apart from devotion to and reliance upon the regard of others.Dakin is the only boy who is obviously happy at the end. He was always the most confident about his own sexual attractiveness. He matured early and is disinclined to take anything to heart. He is not unkind or thoughtless but the world has always been open to him – Hector, Irwin, Posner and Fiona all make room for him – and this allows him to move through it with ease. He makes the best use of both Hector and Irwin and, in return, attempts to give them what he thinks they want. He has some intellectual depth, his theory that literature is actually about losers (p. 46) being the response of someone who does at least take an overview, whilst he is the one who understands Irwin’s pragmatism the best. Dakin saves Hector’s job, though this is achieved by blackmailing the hapless Felix. Dakin does not seek a personal faith or credo, like Scripps, nor is beset by insecurities, like Posner. He shows no musical talent, as do the other two, and he offers no literary quotations or references in the classroom. His acute awareness of the power dimensions of historical situations is matched by a similar insight into the dynamics of the rivalry between Hector and Irwin. Like his mentor, Irwin, Dakin is destined to prosper, untroubled by self-doubt or scruples.Of the rest of the group, only Rudge is given an individuality remotely comparable to these three. He comes across as the least sophisticated of them all, though this might be a front, as he is bright enough to write and talk at the entrance examinations in ways designed to impress. Describing himself as dull and ordinary (p. 86), he never seems to expect anything from school, university or himself. He picks up on Irwin’s methods readily enough and is prepared to use them, though the irony in his judgement of the new teacher’s ways which he confides to Mrs Lintott – It’s cutting edge, miss. It really is. (p. 34) – shows that he’s well aware that it is all some kind of game. He seems to get on well with Dorothy, whose own teaching methods are characterised by a down-to-earth practicality. It is to her that he gives his memorable verdict on history as a process and a subject – just one fucking thing after another (p. 85). Rudge appears to be genuinely proud of his career as a house builder, resenting perceived criticism from Mrs Lintott and decrying his years of being patronised. It is difficult to see just what overall impact his educational experience has had on him in a more positive sense.Akthar, Lockwood and Timms are less well defined as individuals, though we can note that all three seem to take especial pleasure in ‘ribbing’ both Hector and Irwin with their questions, usually accompanied with the appellation of ‘sir’, which only serves to enhance the effect of gentle mockery. They provide much of the verbal wit and vitality of the classroom scenes.QuotesDakin‘Irwin does like him. He seldom looks at anyone else.’ (Posner-81)‘…he was the one who made me realise you were allowed to think like this’ (47 Talking about Irwin)‘I don’t understand it. I have never wanted to please anybody the way I do him, girls not excepted.’(76-Talking about Irwin)Posner‘Sir, I think I may be homosexual’ (41)‘Oh Poz, with your spaniel heart. It will pass.’ (Scripps-81)‘But I want to get into Oxford, Sir. If I do, Dakin might love me.’ (42)ScrippsI figure I have to get through this romance with God now or else it’ll be hanging around half my life.’(45)Whole text questionsAbout the History1. History itself is a subject in the play. In the play Dakin calls Irwin’s method subjunctive history, the history of what might have been. Do you think there is value in Irwin’s approach to looking at historical events? Why or why not?2. In addition to world historical events we are also given a glimpse at the personal histories of the characters in the play. What do their personal histories reveal? How do their remembrances differ?3. Much of the play is not about poetry but literature. Many of the poets quoted wrote during World War I. What resonances exist between the young men at war and the young men in the play?About the Play1. The three teachers, Mrs. Lintott, Mr. Hector and Mr. Irwin, have strikingly different teaching methods and goals. Discuss the merits and disadvantages of their competing pedagogies.2. Irwin says he does not think there is time for Hector’s type of teaching any more. What does he mean? What is lost with the loss of Hector?3. Hector is a problematic character in the play. He is a gifted teacher but some of his actions are inappropriate. Can one reconcile Hector’s behaviour with his teaching?4. Mrs. Lintott is the lone woman in the play. What is her role both as an educator and historian? Is it significant that she is surrounded by men, both in the school and in her work? How do you interpret her outburst about the role of women in history?5. The characters in the play occasionally step outside themselves to comment on the action of the play, either within the moment or sometimes from a perspective years later. How does this commentary help us understand the play? ................
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