meetings in the second term were reduced to two, through other activities invading our preciously guarded Friday nights. With a maximum possible of four meetings a term, we can ill afford to have any taken away from us. Crewe has been a mature Prime Minister,and speaks good sense; Silbermann,Leader of the Opposition, makes friends and influences people by dry and sometimes biting humour; others, hitherto silent, are beginning to open up,and there is no doubt that this Parliamen tary experience will stand them in good stead in years to come. Question time has fallen short of that of some previous years: a pity, because this is always interesting, and tests the competency of tire Cabinet. Myles offered to act as Clerk, with no previous experience, and was making a good job of the work until he left at half-year, his place being voluntarily taken by T. Allen. It is good to see members willing to take on posts which involve more than a little hard work. SCHOOL PLAYS The presentation of Two Mediaeval Miracle Plays was an experiment. It is not likely to be repeated, but within the limitations of the plays themselves, they combined to give us an interesting experience. Our modern sophisticated audiences have grown away from this type of play. In mediaeval English communities, June was a time of merry-making and festivity. The people thronged the streets; the shops displayed their best wares; the taverns were crowded. The Trade Guilds, which had been rehearsing for months, carted their small stages on to the streets and entertained the people with miracle plays: dramatisations of Biblical stories. These Plays were essentially part of the festivity, and so contained quite an element of comedy mixedup with the more serious reminder of God's dealings with man. The simple peasants would no doubt associate themselves closely with the characters in the Plays, and discuss them long afterwards. Today we demand more subtlety, a good plot, a who-dunnit or who-singit: we are bred on crime, eternal triangles and gay music. Nevertheless it was interesting to see,for a couple of hours, the kind of play they once liked. The moral of the first play would appear to be the character-transformation of quarrelsome com plaining shepherds in the presence of the baby Jesus. Grumbling about weather, wife and overlords, the shepherds have a sheep stolen from them by a notorious thief. The latter takes the sheep home, where he and his wife manage for a while to persuade the
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