To what extent do you believe that The History Boys and Love's Labour's Lost are satires on attitudes to 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 more satirical overall; However, there is also an obvious element of satire in The History Boys. In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare satirizes the education and pompous nature of some of those who consider themselves scholars, notably through the verbosity and pretentious nature of characters such as Holofernes and Armado, as well as the ideas deceitful that the king and his lords have. on the stock market. On the other hand, in The History Boys, Bennett presents several views on education, notably through the two contrasting teaching styles of Hector and Irwin, and their respective merits, the varied spectrum of definitions of the history given throughout the play and the way in which he uses the character of Hector as a satire of traditional attitudes towards scholarship. In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare satirizes erudition by painting the portrait of a man convinced of his superior intelligence, but who is in reality a fool, using Don Armado, who exaggerates the number and length of the words he he puts into his speech, as well as his creation and misuse of words. An example of this is found in Act V Scene 1, when he speaks of his meeting with the princess "in the posterior of this day, which the rude multitude calls afternoon." He uses the word "posterior" absurdly, although technically logical, because it means backwards, but it is generally used to describe the human behind. Additionally, he insinuates that he is an intellectually superior person, referring to ...... middle of paper ...... engaging in illegal activities, and even goes so far as to attempt to justify it , highlights his myopic moral sense and makes him the ultimate parody of a rigid schoolmaster. Overall, both plays 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 fact, the main difference is that it is more oriented towards teaching than learning. In Love's Labour's Lost the whole play is arguably a satire of educational attitudes, with almost every character serving in their own way as satire. Works Cited: Love's Labour's Lost, William Shakespeare, The History Boys, Alan BennettArtsalive.ca. 2004. Love's Labor Lost Study Guide. [online] Available at: http://www.artsalive.ca/pdf/eth/activities/loves_labors_guide.pdf [Accessed December 6 2013].