Read Online The History Boys by Alan Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

no idea.
    Dakin What else?
    Scripps It’s what you don’t do.
    Dakin You don’t not wank?
    Jesus. You’re headed for the bin.
    Scripps It’s not for ever.
    Dakin Yeah? Just tell me on the big day and I’ll stand well back.
    Scripps I figure I have to get through this romance with God now or else it’ll be hanging around half my life. But I don’t see why I should wish it on any other poor sod.
    The parents, of course, hate it. So ageing.
    Drugs they were prepared for, but not Matins.
    Some of it, though, I still don’t get. They reckon you have to love God because God loves you. Why? Posner loves you but it doesn’t mean you have to love Posner. As it is, God’s this massive case of unrequited love. He’s Hector minus the motorbike.
    God should get real. We don’t owe him anything.
    Dakin Good thing to say at Cambridge, that.
    Scripps No.
    Dakin Why? It’s an angle.
    Scripps It’s private.
    Dakin Fuck private.
    Scripps Don’t let Hector hear you say that. You’re his best boy.
    Test me.
    Dakin What on?
    Scripps T. S. Eliot.
    â€˜A painter of the Umbrian School
    Designed upon a gesso ground
    The nimbus of the Baptised God
    The wilderness is cracked and browned.
    â€˜But through the waters pale and thin
    Still shine the unoffending feet
    And here above the painter set
    The Father and the Paraclete.’
    Dakin This is the one about the painting in the National Gallery.
    Scripps Yes.
    Dakin Don’t tell me.
    Piero della Francesca.
    Actually, you know what?
    We are fucking clever.
    Scripps ( laughs ) Do you know how to seem cleverer still?
    Don’t say Piero della Francesca. Just say Piero.
    Dakin Yes?
    Scripps Apparently.
    Dakin Like Elvis.
    Scripps You’ve got it.
    Dakin The more you read, though, the more you see that literature is actually about losers.
    Scripps No.
    Dakin It’s consolation. All literature is consolation.
    Scripps No, it isn’t. What about when it’s celebration?
    Joy?
    Dakin But it’s written when the joy is over. Finished. So even when it’s joy, it’s grief. It’s consolation.
    That’s why it gets written down.
    I tell you, whatever Hector says, I find literature really lowering.
    Scripps Do you really believe this?
    Dakin Yes.
    Scripps You’re not just doing a line of stuff for the exam? Original thoughts?
    Dakin No .
    Scripps Because it’s the kind of angle Irwin would come up with.
    Dakin Well, it’s true he was the one who made me realise you were allowed to think like this. He sanctioned it. I didn’t know you were allowed to call art and literature into question.
    Scripps Think the unthinkable. Who’s going to stop you?
    Only don’t mention it to Hector.
    Dakin No.
    Scripps But if you reckon literature’s consolation, you should try religion.
    Dakin Actually it isn’t wholly my idea.
    Scripps No?
    Dakin I’ve been reading this book by Kneeshaw.
    Scripps Who?
    Dakin ( shows him book ) Kneeshaw. He’s a philosopher. Frederick Kneeshaw.
    Scripps I think that’s pronounced Nietszche.
    Dakin Shit. Shit. Shit.
    Scripps What’s the matter?
    Dakin I talked to Irwin about it. He didn’t correct me.
    He let me call him Kneeshaw. He’ll think I’m a right fool. Shit.
    Irwin and Hector .
    Irwin It’s just that the boys seem to know more than they’re telling.
    Hector Don’t most boys?
    Diffidence is surely to be encouraged.
    Irwin In an examination?
    They seem to have got hold of the notion that the stuff they do with you is off-limits so far as the examination is concerned.
    Hector That’s hardly surprising. I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education. Which is not to say that I don’t regard education as the enemy of education, too.
    However, if you think it will help, I will speak to them.
    Irwin I’d appreciate it.
    For what it’s worth, I sympathise with your feelings about