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May Week at Cambridge

The most interesting and bizarre time of the year in which to visit Cambridge is during May Week. This is neither in May, nor a week. For some reason, which nobody now remembers, May week is the name given to the first two weeks in June, at the very end of the University year.

The paradox is pleasantly quaint, but is also in a way apt. May Week denotes not so much a particular period of time as the general atmosphere of relaxation and unwinding at the end of the year’s work. It starts for each undergraduate when he finishes his examinations and it continues until he ‘goes down’ at the end of the term.

Everything as far as possible has to happen in the open air: parties, picnics on punts, concerts and plays. May Week seems almost like a celebration of the coming of spring till then ignored in favour of sterner matters like examinations and this spirit of release seems to take over the entire town.

People gravitate towards the river and on to the Backs which are the broad lawns and graceful landscaped gardens behind those colleges which stand next to the river Queens, King’s, Clare, Trinity Hall, Trinity and St. John’s. The river banks are lined with strollers and spectators and there is a steady procession of punts up and down the Cam, some drifting slowly and lazily, others poled by energetic young men determined to show off their skill.

Meanwhile the colleges are preparing feverishly for the various events in which May Week culminates; the most important of these are the May Balls, for which some girls plot years in advance to get invitations and the May Races.

Rowing plays a very important part in Cambridge life, and no less then 128 crews of eight compete in the ‘Mays’, which are rowed over the period of four days.

Music and drama also have a part to play in the festivities. Nearly every college in the University (and there are over twenty of them) holds a May Week Concert; at Trinity for example, there is a concert of Madrigals at which the performers and most of the audience sit in punts at dusk beneath the willows. Many of the colleges present a play in the open air. At Corpus Christy College the setting is the medieval courtyard in which Christopher Marlowe lived over 400 years ago at Queens, a Tudor Court.

At the Art theatre, the Footlights, a famous University club which specializes in revue, puts on its annual show. There is also a concert in King’s College Chapel, but it is almost impossible for the casual visitor to get tickets for this.

The climax of May Week and for many undergraduates the final event of their university life is the spate of college May Balls. When the river is lit up with coloured lights and flaming torches, braziers grow in the gardens, marquees are erected in flood lit courts, ball-room orchestras compete for dances with string bands and pop groups and puts glide romantically down the river. And in the silver light of dawn couples in evening dress stroll leisurely, perhaps, rather dreamily through the Backs and the narrow deserted streets, until it is time to punt upstream through the meadows to breakfast at Grantchester or some other equally attractive sport.