The History Boys Read Online Free PDF

that far from circumscribing the liberty of the subject this will enlarge it.
    I would try not to be shrill or earnest. An amused tolerance always comes over best, particularly on television. Paradox works well and mists up the windows, which is handy. ‘The loss of liberty is the price we pay for freedom’ type thing.
    School. That’s all it is. In my case anyway. Back to school.

    Though the general setting is a sixth-form classroom in a boys’ school in the eighties in the north of England, when Hector first comes in, a figure in motor-cycle leathers and helmet, the stage is empty.
    His sixth-formers, eight boys of seventeen or eighteen, come briskly on and take Hector out of his motor-cycle gear, each boy removing an item and as he does so presenting it to the audience with a flourish .
    Lockwood ( with gauntlets ) Les gants.
    Akthar ( with a scarf ) L’écharpe.
    Rudge Le blouson d’aviateur.
    Finally the helmet is removed .
    Timms Le casque.
    The taking-off of the helmet reveals Hector (which is both his surname and his nickname) as a schoolmaster of fifty or so .
    Â Â Â  Dakin, a handsome boy, holds out a jacket .
    Dakin Permettez-moi, monsieur.
    Hector puts on the jacket .
    Hector Bien fait, mes enfants. Bien fait.
    Hector is a man of studied eccentricity. He wears a bow tie .

    Classroom .
    Now fades the thunder of the youth of England clearing summer’s obligatory hurdles.
    Felicitations to you all. Well done, Scripps! Bravo, Dakin! Crowther, congratulations. And Rudge, too. Remarkable. All, all deserve prizes. All, all have done that noble and necessary thing, you have satisfied the examiners of the Joint Matriculation Board, and now, proudly jingling your A Levels, those longed-for emblems of your conformity, you come before me once again to resume your education.
    Rudge What were A Levels, then?
    Hector Boys , boys, boys.
    A Levels, Rudge are credentials, qualifications, the footings of your CV. Your Cheat’s Visa. Time now for the bits in between. You will see from the timetable that our esteemed Headmaster has given these periods the euphemistic title –
    Posner looks up the word in the dictionary .
    â€“ of General Studies.
    Posner ‘Euphemism … substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for a harsh or direct one.’
    Hector A verbal fig-leaf. The mild or vague expression being General Studies. The harsh or direct one, Useless Knowledge. The otiose – ( Points at Posner .) – the trash, the department of why bother?
    Posner ‘Otiose: serving no practical purpose, without function.’
    Hector If, heaven forfend, I was ever entrusted with the timetable, I would call these lessons A Waste of Time.
    Nothing that happens here has anything to do with getting on, but remember, open quotation marks, ‘All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use,’ close quotation marks.
    Who said? Lockwood? Crowther? Timms? Akthar?
    Pause .
    â€˜ Loveliest of trees the cherry now.’
    Akthar A. E. Housman, sir.
    Hector ‘A. E. Housman, sir.’
    Timms Wasn’t he a nancy, sir?
    Hector Foul, festering grubby-minded little trollop. Do not use that word. ( He hits him on the head with an exercise book .)
    Timms You use it, sir.
    Hector I do, sir, I know, but I am far gone in age and decrepitude.
    Crowther You’re not supposed to hit us, sir.
    We could report you, sir.
    Hector ( despair ) I know, I know. (an elaborate pantomime, all this )
    Dakin You should treat us with more respect. We’re scholarship candidates now.
    We’re all going in for Oxford and Cambridge.
    There is a silence and Hector sits down at his table, seemingly stunned .
    Hector ‘Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire.’
    I thought all that silliness was finished with.
    I thought that after last year we were settling for the less lustrous institutions … Derby, Leicester, Nottingham. Even my own dear