The History Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

much as I had been, a child in a class of young men. Nick (whose own voice broke at twelve) thought that these days a sixteen-year-old boy with an unbroken voice was both unlikely and impossible to cast. This I could appreciate, though at the time I abandoned the notion with some regret.
    The casting difficulty I can understand, but I don’t entirely agree that such late development no longer occurs. It’s true that today most children develop earlier, but the few who don’t suffer more acutely in consequence, and it certainly still happens. I knew one boy, the son of a friend, who matured every bit as late as I did, though he coped with it much better than me. Looking back, I see those years from fourteen to sixteen as determining so much that I would later wish away, particularly a sense of being shut out that I have never entirely lost.
    As it is, Posner is the heir to the character I never quite wrote, a boy who is young for his age and whose physical immaturity engenders a premature disillusion. Watching Sam Barnett playing the part, I wince to hear my own voice at sixteen.

A Note on the First Production
    I have not included many stage directions or even noted changes of scene; the more fluid the action the better. The design of the National Theatre production, by Bob Crowley, was of a classroom in a school built in the 1960s, with the scenes in the staff room and Headmaster’s study achieved by re-arranging the sliding walls. These scene changes were done largely by the boys themselves, under cover of film sequences of life in the school projected on a large video screen above the set proper. These, like the opening shots of Irwin’s TV series, Heroes or Villains? , were filmed by Ben Taylor. Except for one moment towards the end of Act Two, I have not given details of these video inserts in the script, though they do often help to move the action along: we see Dakin making up to the Headmaster’s secretary, for instance; Hector coming disconsolately down the corridor after his dismissal; and the start of his final trip on the motor bike.
    There is a piano on stage throughout, and this, too, helps to mask the scene change, besides accompanying the film extracts which enliven Hector’s eccentric teaching regime.

    The History Boys was first performed in the Lyttelton auditorium of the National Theatre, London, on 18 May 2002. The cast was as follows:
    Akthar Sacha Dhawan
Crowther Samuel Anderson
Dakin Dominic Cooper
Lockwood Andrew Knott
Posner Samuel Barnett
Rudge Russell Tovey
Scripps Jamie Parker
Timms James Corden
    Headmaster Clive Merrison
Mrs Lintott Frances de la Tour
Hector Richard Griffiths
Irwin Stephen Campbell Moore
    Other parts played by Tom Attwood, Rudi Dharmalingam,
Colin Haigh, Joseph Raishbrook and Joan Walker
    Director Nicholas Hytner
Designer Bob Crowley
Lighting Designer Mark Henderson
Music Richard Sisson
Sound Designer Colin Pink
Video Director Ben Taylor
    The cover photograph includes members of the cast of this production. From back row to front: Russell Tovey, Andrew Knott, Jamie Parker, Samuel Anderson, Dominic Cooper, James Corden, Sacha Dhawan, Samuel Barnett

    Characters
    THE BOYS
    Posner
    Dakin
    Scripps
    Rudge
    Lockwood
    Akthar
    Timms
    Crowther
    THE TEACHERS
    Irwin
    Hector
    Headmaster
    Mrs Lintott (Dorothy)

    THE HISTORY BOYS

Act One
    Irwin is in a wheelchair, in his forties, addressing three or four unidentified MPs .
    Irwin This is the tricky one.
    The effect of the bill will be to abolish trial by jury in at least half the cases that currently come before the courts and will to a significant extent abolish the presumption of innocence.
    Our strategy should therefore be to insist that the bill does not diminish the liberty of the subject but amplifies it; that the true liberty of the subject consists in the freedom to walk the streets unmolested etc., etc., secure in the knowledge that if a crime is committed it will be promptly and sufficiently punished and