The History Boys Comedy Essay

Words: 1526
Pages: 7

The History Boys Essay
13. “Brilliantly funny….but by the end, tears are as near as laughter.” To what extent can we read The History boys as comedy?

One of the key factors that makes the History Boys such an iconic play is its witty comedic effect throughout the entire book. Using various techniques, such as parody, contrasting characters and clever juxtapositions within the plot, intelligent metaphors, bathos and many more. But at first glance the history boys could seem a typical dramatic themed book with a group of characters restricted almost entirely to a single location and a short period of time however looking deeper into the play you begin to notice the comedy reveal before your eyes.

Within Hector’s French lesson, the
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“Ah think” Hector once again in the book uses his quick wit and intelligence to frustrate the headmaster giving a sarcastic response to a question the headmaster clearly wants answering and for him not to use his poetry and intelligence to get him out of a situation as he normally would do so. “I have no idea. What women know or don’t know has always been a mystery to me.” using the word women hector tries to relate to the audience and make a remark about men and women in general, suggesting that does any man know what women do or don’t know which may have been intended to make the audience laugh and leave them wondering why Hector isn’t taking this matter seriously and is instead making jokes, showing how time and having a modern audience viewing this brings shock to us as issues such as this would been taking much more seriously and probably involved police but the headmaster is more worried about how the school may come across if he has to