The History Boys: Act One, initial thoughts

Characters:
Teachers: Hector, Irwin, The Headmaster and Mrs. Lintott
Boys: Akthar, Crowther, Dakin, Lockwood, Posner, Rudge, Scripps and Timms

Act One, AKA, half of the play.

• What's in a title? Well, these particular boys are testament to a time in society when one could cheat their way into university. Oh, for those halcyon days! But there is a double meaning in there with the boys being taught by a new history teacher, Irwin, who is brought in as a special coach by the Headmaster to help the men pass their exams. They are both history (set in the 1980's, it was first performed in twenty-oh-four) and being taught it.
• The boy's teacher, Hector, is a paedophile. In black and white (or cherry red and white in this case) this is an awful thing. He drives them home on his motorbike and molests them at "50 miles an hour". The really strange thing is that the boys themselves don't seem to mind this abuse of trust, they just seem to put up with it. Was the culture different then, with Saville on the TV, or is it just part of the plot that Bennett doesn't want getting too much in the way of the comedy? Either way, something bad is bound to happen to him, as he is both a paedo and gay and in the eighties, he would of been a figure of hate because of the fear that AIDS was spread by gay men and the obvious fear of kiddy-fiddlers.
• The comedy in this play is mostly created in the boys talking and being smart-arses. Sometimes with Hector, sometimes with Irwin, but always with the boys. Unless it's in the staffroom, in which case it's without the boys and with Mrs.Lintott, the token female of the play. There is also a little slapstick near the beginning on pages five to six, where Hector hits Timms and Lockwood on the head with a book. Of course, these days, the teacher would be given the sack and never be allowed to work as one again, but Hector gets away with a lot worse things than book-head hitting.
• In some areas, Irwin is less clever than the boys, for example, he can't pronounce "Nietszche", meaning that he has never said the name allowed before. Ha! What a cretin! We can contrast this Magdalen College, Oxford alumni with Hector, who went to Leeds and seems to know everything. Is this Bennet's way of trying to show up the snobbery of the best university attenders as being nought but a facade. Irwin calls "un chat un chat" while Hector prevaricates around the bush, quoting poetry and being eccentric in his mannerisms.
• King Lear is quoted. This is strange because King Lear is a tragedy and The History Boys is a comedy. Could it be quoted because it is about passing on a kingdom to the next generation, just like Hector is passing on knowledge? Will this play end in tragedy? It already has the time bomb of Hector, who, in the final slice of act one, is found out for what he is and forced to bring forward his retirement.