To what extent do you think The History Boys and Love's Labour's Lost are satires on attitudes towards scholarship? In The History Boys and Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare and Alan Bennett both satirize scholarship to varying degrees. Love's Labour's Lost is overall more satirical; however, there is also an obvious element of satire in The History Boys. In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare heavily satirizes the education and pompous nature of some of those who consider themselves erudite, particularly through the verbosity and pretentious nature of characters such as Holofernes and Armadus, as well as the deluded ideas that the king and his lords have. on the scholarship. On the other hand, in The History Boys, Bennett presents different points of view on education, especially through the two contrasting teaching styles of Hector and Irwin, and their respective merits, the broad spectrum of definitions of history provided throughout the work and the way it uses the character of Hector as a satire of traditional attitudes towards scholarship. In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare satirizes erudition by painting a picture of a man who is convinced of his superior intelligence, but is actually a fool, using Don Armado, who greatly exaggerates the number and length of words he he inserts into his speech, along with his creation and misuse of words. An example of this is in Act V, scene 1, when he talks about meeting the princess "in the later days of this day, which the rude multitude call afternoon". He uses the word "rear" in a nonsensical way, even though it technically makes sense, as it means towards the back, but it is usually used to describe the human butt. Furthermore, he insinuates that he is an intellectually superior person, referring to... middle of paper... participating in illegal activities, and even goes so far as to try to justify it, highlighting his moral shortsightedness and makes him the ultimate parody of a rigid master of school. Overall, both works use satire to some extent, but in The History Boys there is much less satire, more different definitions of History and attitudes towards teaching - in The main difference, in fact, is that it is oriented more to teaching and learning. In Love's Labour's Lost, the entire work is undoubtedly a satire on educational attitudes, with almost all the characters serving as satire in their own way. Works Cited: Love's Labour's Lost, William Shakespeare, The History Boys, Alan BennettArtsalive.ca. 2004. Study Guide on Lost Love's Pain. [online] Available at: http://www.artsalive.ca/pdf/eth/activities/loves_labours_guide.pdf [Accessed: 6 December 2013].