Dance and Skylark

By John Moore.

Macmillan, S3.00.

When an English village undertakes to produce an historical pageant with purely local talent, anything can happen, and in this delightfully trivial novel it happens on every page. Old feuds resume, new ones begin, the vicar’s son contributes lewd Elizabethan verses which nobody understands. funds are misappropriated, costumes prove transparent, unlikely couples fall in love, teetotalers take to drink, and quiet citizens turn out to be theatrical geniuses. At lust Dionysius appears, suitably incarnated, to turn history upside down and sweep the pageant to resounding success. Everyone, of course, lives happily ever after. The English are unbeatable at this sort of light novel, in which persuasively charming characters romp through a plot which never seems impossible because each episode is reasonable in itself. The grand total is pandemonium, but that’s part of the game. Mr. Moore carries off his giddy charade with a deft, gently satiric touch and a fine eye for rural beauty.