Tempest Tost

The Salterton Trilogy #1

by Robertson Davies

An amateur production of The Tempest provides a colourful backdrop for an hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare's play, falls in love with the beautiful Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows that she has plans of her own, Hector despairs and tries to commit suicide on the play's opening night.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Classics, Literary Fiction, Literature, Humor, Canadian Literature

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.

Novels:

The Salterton Trilogy
• Tempest-tost (1951)
• Leaven of Malice (1954)
• A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
The Deptford Trilogy
• Fifth Business (1970)
• The Manticore (1972)
• World of Wonders (1975)
The Cornish Trilogy
• The Rebel Angels (1981)
• What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
• The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (Davies' final, incomplete, trilogy)
• Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
• The Cunning Man (1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertso...

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of a drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines--not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master’s call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality. Solly was in a measure a victim of this unscrupulous passion, but Freddy was wholly in the grip of it.”

Fredegonde “Freddy” Webster is a supporting actress in this novel, but for those who have developed an addiction to Flavia de Luce’s adventures, you will find a like minded young lady in Miss Freddy. She has a still in the gardening shed, with which she makes passable wine and suspect champagne. She is, from what you can see of the quote above, a book fiend. She is, in other words, a wonderfully interesting individual.

She is quite content to let her older sister Griselda have center stage. She is a lovely young woman at the age to be perfectly in bloom. Mr. Webster, a widower, is frequently taken aback by the rather aggressive opinions expressed by both his daughters. He has his own interests that he likes to putter with, and the raising of his daughters is left to themselves for the most part. ”He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.”

Then please do let more young women have the run of a good library.

As Griselda says at one point, ”I can’t help it if I’m not stupid enough to be good company.” Reading books does do that.

When the Salterton amateur theater group decides to put on a production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Griselda finds herself at the center of the attention of three vastly different men. Hector Mackilwraith is an unlikely suitor for anyone. He has never really shown interest in women before, but the theater has a way of raising the libido of all those involved, even a man with a steady pulse like Mackilwraith. He is a math teacher, a very good one, and is very set in his ways. ”’I know what I know,’ said Hector, ‘and it is sufficient for my needs.’” What a tragic sort of personality to be chasing after such a girl with so much promise. She would suffocate under such regimented thinking. I can’t imagine ever saying I don’t need to know more. There is also Solly Bridgetower, a good sort but crippled by his devotion to his mother. The other suitor is Roger Tasset, who is a bit of a player. A man who is into sampling everything in the store without offering to buy any of it.

The play itself is on the edge of disaster at any moment. I am in these cases always reassured by the quote from the movie Shakespeare in Love.

”Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.”

Despite all the hazards of ego, ineptitude, and lovelorn actors, it will somehow all be fine.

I checked to see when I’d last read a Robertson Davies novel and was stunned to discover that it was 1996. I read him in a flurry in the early 1990s, and then, like many strange aspects of my reading choices, it is a mystery as to why it has been so long since I’ve indulged myself with the dry wit and laugh out loud humor of one of the greatest Canadian writers. The characters are all so deftly drawn that it deepens the humor as we experience their trials and tribulations. Poor Hector Mackilwraith will be as real to you by the end of the novel as people you’ve known your whole life. The intellectualism infused in the plot is as enjoyable as sipping a fine cabernet sauvignon while listening to Bach’s Air on a G String.

If you like theater, audacious characters, and a fine combination of wit and witless dialogue, you really should add Robertson Davies to your future reading experiences.

“Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine. Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.”--Macbeth

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[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a sucker for the combination of dry wit and stuffed-shirt, neo-Victorian narration (my kinda beach read), and this remarkably well-formed first novel by Canada's foremost Man of Letters (and hero to John Irving of all people) supplied the much-needed learned diversions in spades. Full of well-turned phrases and penetrating insights into both human nature and into provincial post-war Canadian mores, this book was like reading George Eliot after she'd had a bit too much sherry, had changed into something more comfortable and had whispered in your ear, "Well, just between you and me...."

Salterton is a fictionalized version of the Eastern Ontario city where I did my own undergraduate studies (Kingston), but it, somewhat disappointingly for me (in a selfish way--it has no bearing on the novel's viability itself) doesn't really feature as a "character" in the novel as I would have liked (being a fan of Dickens's tendency to elevate millieu to pride of place in his novels), but no matter: this story of a bunch of amateur thespians essaying to put on The Tempest provides Mr. Davies with an excellent excuse to parade (with a definite lightness in his step) the vast, eclectic nature of his learning before us, and connect it all together somehow.

The character of Humphrey Cobbler (a musician eventually hired to work on their production of The Tempest and nobody's fool) is, as I see it, a personification of that unifying force, and in his many iconoclastic (but never cruel) expostulations convinced me that he, of any of the characters, might possibly be the author's alter-ego. Consider the following exchange between himself and Canadian-all-too-Canadian math teacher Hector Mackilwraith over the value of antique knowledge:

“Never heard of Galen? Claudius Galen? The father of medical practice?”
“Is he dead?”
“A small matter of seventeen hundred years.”
“Ah. Well I dare say his opinion has been contradicted since then. Medical opinion is always changing. Do you see The Reader’s Digest?”
“Galen wasn’t just a pill-roller. He was a first-rate psychologist. The remark I have quoted to you is really a philosophical opinion phrased as a medical maxim.”
“But it is out-dated.”
“Damn it, wisdom is never out-dated.”
“But how can the opinions of a doctor who died so long ago be any good today? In religion, of course, age is a good thing. But not in medicine.”
“All right, Mackilwraith, you win. I feel myself to be an angel, beating my ineffectual wings in vain against the granite fortress of your obtuse self-righteousness.”
“You’re not an angel. I think you’re rather silly. Why do you clutter your mind with what a dead doctor said?”
“Galen isn’t just a dead doctor, man; he was a great spirit. Probably a lot of his ideas are fantastic now. But he had flashes of insight which we can’t discount. That’s what makes a man great; his flashes of insight, when he pierces through the nonsense of his time, and gets at something that really matters.”
“You are a lucky man to have room to spare in your head for truck of that sort.”
“Truck?”
“Most of us find it hard enough to keep track of the things that we really need to know.”
“Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.”
“Certainly.”
“You say that a man’s first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?”
“Of course.”
“Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.”(Emphasis added)

This is entirely typical of the kind of exchanges that Cobbler has with all of the other characters as well, and, as I said earlier, I am a bit of a sucker for this kind of thing, and didn't really find that it felt artificial as dialogue (though your own mileage may vary)

All in all, Tempest-tost is not too shabby an innings for a then-early thirty-something year-old, and it really does prefigure the remarkable depths of the novels to come (e.g. Fifth Business and The Manticore, which were a big influence on me when I was young).

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The (Mostly) Dead Writers Society Author in Residence program 2022

My introduction to Robertson Davies was his wonderful Fifth Business in an introductory English course during my first year of university, over 40 years ago! I know that I read the Salterton trilogy shortly after concluding the Deptford trilogy and I seem to recall being underwhelmed. What can I say? I was young (about the age of Griselda) and didn't properly appreciate this witty novel.

There is no doubt that this was a first novel, but written by a man who was both an experienced playwright and actor. He has good dramatic timing and doesn't overdo the ridiculous antics of his characters. You can tell this book is written by a man who has daughters. Freddy and Griselda are depicted realistically, with sisterly disdain for one another and behaviour congruent with that of young women of the time (1950s). I must say that I completely understood Freddy's presence at the auction, competing for the box of old books.

This is also an author who has been involved in small town amateur theatre, maybe exaggerating a little for effect, but accurately reflecting the community politics involved in such an endeavour. At this point, Davies’ father was still alive and he apparently was still trying not to be too outrageous. This is a dress rehearsal for The Deptford Trilogy, where he was able to pull out the stops and write the marvelously weird characters that I love him for.

Although I consider his later work to be better than this novel, it is still extremely enjoyable and a very worthwhile read. I'm pleased to be old enough and hopefully wise enough now to truly appreciate this very Canadian book.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The thing about comedy that I greatly value is that it is infinitely harder to fake than tragedy," says Robertson Davies. "It is extremely easy to be gloomy." Tempest-Tost is an excellent comedy. Is that, Davies would like to know, so bad?

It centers on a community production of Shakespeare's best magic trick, The Tempest, starring young Griselda as Ariel as she sorts out her several suitors: Roger Tasset, a classic Victorian rake; Solly, the one you root for; and local high school teacher Hector Mackilwraith, who's the most interesting person in the book. He's, like, you remember Nice Guys of OK Cupid? It's a defunct Tumblr that collected dating profiles of guys like this:



These dudes who are like, if girls would just look at me instead of that jerk over there I would treat her like a queen, she'd be so cared for, but they won't even look my way and do you know why? It's because women are bitches. You totally know these guys, right? This weird, gross mix of self-pity and objectification adding up to misogyny. Anyway, thats what Hector is: he's a Nice Guy. He gets mad because Griselda has the nerve to disagree about him being a dreamboat.

That's very interesting, and I dig it. Hector's a unique character. The substantial supporting cast, in contrast, is filled out with Victorian archetypes like the above-mentioned rake. Allusions to Victorian authors abound. Davies is thick with Trollope and Balzac; and when it's time to name valuable books he goes with 19th-century lurid classics Lady Audley's Secret and East Lynn. There is indeed a certain Victorian stuffiness just sniffable around the edges of Tempest-Tost; the fact that the book is fully aware of it doesn't really change things.

It ends up being rather a lot of characters who do rather a lot of things, leading you to wonder whether you really need to keep track of them all and why they're there in the first place. One of them, for example, is Cobbler the organist. He's unnecessary to the plot but nonetheless he keeps showing up; you get the sense that Davies is fond of him, which is a shame since you are not fond of him yourself; you think he's an ass. You think Davies knows he's an ass but you're not sure.

And "Allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge," says Cobbler. "You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently...I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dust." And you feel like that's what you've been given here, a jumble, tempest-tost; it's all very interesting and it's pretty fun, but does it make anything?

[Bibliophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know much about Robertson Davies, but I imagine he must have been a delightful human being. Anyone able to convey so much wit, heart and humanity must surely be a helluva guy. Tempest-Tost, published in 1951, feels fresh and timeless. Set in a small town in Ontario, it follows the lives of a group of amateur thespians during a production of The Tempest. Davies perfectly captures the idiosyncrasies of the characters, effortlessly imparting his wisdom - yes, wisdom! - in the process. Just see how elegantly and accurately he describes us bibliophiles:

"She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality."

See, he knows what he's talking about. It does rage in the breast like a demon! I am like a dope-taking Turk in pursuit of drugs and concubines!

Davies is fabulous. So glad this is a trilogy!

[Simon Hollway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adored his other two trilogies so dreaded circling back to the beginning and grazing my shins against his inevitably hesitant debut. But this fledgling appeared fully formed - this is either my favourite or second favourite of all his books. Knockabout brilliant, picaresque, laugh-out loud funny. Pickwick Papers, Noel Coward, Mervyn Peake funny. Mr Davies is a joy.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

for the eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.......

My first Robertson Davies.

Davies with his dry wit and laser eye and pen is able to penetrate into the psyche of his set of players whilst they put up the Tempest in a Canadian garden. He is mainly concerned with the comedy – tragedy being enacted off stage.

We see the effect of upbringing, the effect of love given and love withheld. How our perceptions effect how we see the world, what we do with our lives and how we let what happens to us shape us.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leer a Robertson Davies es un acierto seguro. Davies era un inteligente y refinado narrador, dueño de un sutil sentido del humor y una erudición privilegiada, características todas ellas que se hacen evidentes tanto en sus diálogos como en sus descripciones. Esto, unido a un pulso narrativo encomiable, hace que la lectura de sus novelas sea una delicia para el paladar más exigente.

'A merced de la tempestad' fue la primera novela que escribió el canadiense Robertson Davies, en el año 1951, libro que formaría posteriormente parte de la llamada Trilogía de Salterton (siendo las otras dos ‘Levadura de malicia’ y ‘Una mezcla de flaquezas’), localidad ficticia donde transcurren las tres novelas.

La historia que nos plantea Davies en 'A merced de la tempestad' es todo un homenaje al teatro, elemento que el autor, dramaturgo excelso, dominaba a la perfección. En ella se nos presenta a una serie de personajes, todos ellos actores aficionados, que desean representar La tempestad de Shakespeare. Pero a la presidenta del llamado Teatro Joven, se le ha ocurrido la idea de convertir la obra en una representación pastoril, y para ello han sido elegidos los jardines de St. Agnes, residencia de los Webster. Las desavenencias no se harán esperar.

Davies es un maestro a la hora de describirnos el ambiente en el que transcurrirá la novela, así como los personajes, la misma Salterton, con sus dos catedrales, los paisajes o la arquitectura. Desde el inicio, cuando se nos presenta el escenario en el que va a devenir la trama, Davies nos atrapa. Posteriormente, cuando asistimos al reparto de papeles entre el variopinto grupo de miembros de aficionados al teatro, a los ensayos y a la representación de La tempestad, caemos rendidos ante el saber hacer del escritor canadiense. Y es que los personajes son memorables: Hector Mackilwraith, profesor estricto de matemáticas al que le ha picado el gusanillo de las tablas; la presidenta del Teatro Joven, Nellie Forrester; las hijas del señor Webster, Griselda, que volverá loco a medio reparto, y Freddy, la pequeña aficionada a fabricar sidra; Solly, el joven ayudante de la directora Valentine; y un montón más de secundarios, a cual más delicioso. Davies realiza un meritorio análisis psicológico de las diferentes clases sociales que pueblan Salterton, poniendo de manifiesto sus debilidades y pasiones, todo ello no exento de un gran sentido del humor.

Cuando se habla de Robertson Davies, siempre se le vincula a grandes maestros como Charles Dickens, y su influencia se hace notar también en autores como John Irving. Pero para mí Robertson Davies es único. Tenía una capacidad extraordinaria para crear personajes creíbles y consistentes, y sus historias son intemporales. 'A merced de la tempestad', siendo como es la primera novela que escribió Davies, no llega a la altura de otras obras suyas del mismo corte, como pueda ser 'Ángeles rebeldes', pero su calidad es innegable. Ágil y amena a partes iguales, es una altamente recomendable.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues."
—All’s Well that Ends Well

The first volume in Robertson Davies’ Salterton Trilogy is a provincial Canadian comedy of manners with a universal appeal, in which despite errors being compounded all’s well that ends well, which is as we like it.

From this corny introduction you’ll have gathered Tempest-Tost is a novel with a Shakespearean theme, and so it is. In the middle of the 20th century The Little Theatre company, an amateur group, is attempting to put on an open air pastoral of The Tempest, unaware that they are as much the dramatis personae in a real-life play as the characters they are hoping to portray. Except, as I hope to argue, the fictional parts they play in the comedy are not those they live during the course of the novel.

An example of a episode being significant despite superficial appearances occurs at the end of an auction of a deceased’s effects. A box of romances wrapped in brown paper is bid for by three individuals, one an admirer who wants to give it as a gift to the admired one, another who values books for their own sake, and a third who knows the commercial worth of the sale lot. The books themselves therefore represent three functions: their essential use for reading purposes; their usefulness as a gesture; and their value as commodities. This then could be how the novel works: a light entertainment, yes; perhaps a work to share with bookish friends, certainly; but also possibly a work laden with significances, above and beyond its seeming nature.

As with many authors many names are not chosen at random: they are signifiers, conscious or unconscious, of other meanings. For instance, the novel is mostly set in St Agnes, the buildings and grounds of a wealthy Salterton family the Websters, which features a widower and his two daughters, Griselda and Fredegonde (known as Freddy). The family name reflects the ancient craft of weaving; so, in this case, the Websters’ tangled web of life is (as in All’s Well that Ends Well) made of “mingled yarn, good and ill together” when the gardens of St Agnes — the martyred Roman virgin became the patron saint of girls, appropriately for this novel — are selected for an open-air production of The Tempest. We therefore must envisage St Agnes as Prospero’s Isle for the purposes of the novel: Davies would quite well have known St Agnes to be the name of one of the Scilly Isles off Cornwall.

The author knew whereof he spoke as he’d done some acting in England and was later involved in the launch of the Stratford Shakespeare festival in Toronto, as well as being a published writer on Elizabethan theatre; all of which gives the ups and downs of his fictional theatre company a definite authenticity. (I wonder if Margaret Atwood, who attended some of the Toronto festival performances in the 1950s, was unconsciously alluding to this novel in her recent retelling of the play as Hag-Seed? She didn’t refer to Robertson Davies at all in her acknowledgements, however.) That close familiarity with Shakespeare therefore meant that all the puffed-up importance, rivalries, prejudices, anxieties and antagonisms besetting amateur performances come — if you excuse the pun — into play during the course of the narrative.

And, surprisingly for such a large cast of characters, it’s relatively easy to keep track of who is who because Davies has, dare I say, quite a bitchy way of describing individuals so that they immediately stand out in one’s mind. The girls’ father George Webster, for example, is painted thus: “He came of a generation to which any girl, before she is married, is a kind of unexploded bomb.” And there are plenty of other instances which the reader can savour for themselves.

Here’s the conceit that Davies has as the framework for his tale: though several individuals are assigned parts to play in the pastoral, they play different roles in the action of the story. For example, the director, the professional Miss Valentine Rich is in reality Prospero; despite a gender swap the author gives the game away with her ambiguous forename (the patron saint of lovers) and the retrospectively obvious surname. The fusspot pedant Professor Walter Vambrace — the name is derived from a piece of armour for the forearm — plays Prospero but is actually more like Prospero’s villainous brother Antonio in trying to usurp the director’s role. Meanwhile, though Griselda Webster plays Ariel, she is actually the equivalent of Miranda in this novel, loved by the inadequate Hector Mackilwraith; Hector, though cast as Prospero’s former adviser Gonzalo, is the equivalent of Caliban, except that he only chastely lusts after Griselda. The role of Caliban is played by practical joker Geordie Shortreed, who thus is actually Trinculo, jester to the King of Naples.

This is an enjoyable novel, Robertson Davies’ first ever, and superficially a light romantic comedy which lays no demands on the reader. Though there is no happy-ever-after in the conventional sense, there are rivals in plentiful supply for Griselda’s affections, and power-plays between old hands in the Little Theatre company and Valentine Rich. The author doesn’t resist pointing up any satire both on the main and subsidiary themes (religious denominations come in for some ribaldry, for instance) but neither does he resist how insubstantial everything is. For example, in Chapter Seven, there is discussion after the dress rehearsal about the shadows thrown by the stage lighting:

“I’d be happy if I could just get enough light to kill those shadows,” said Larry Pye; “but do what I will, everywhere an actor goes, he casts a shadow.”

“And why not?” said Solly. “What could be more natural? Here we are in bright moonlight, and every one of us has a shadow. Larry wants us all to be like Peter Schlemihl, who sold his shadow to the Devil.”

Shakespeare’s work is full of metaphors about shadows without substance: “Life’s but a walking shadow,” mused Macbeth; “If we shadows have offended,” said Robin Goodfellow in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to his audience, “think but this, and all is mended, | That you have but slumbered here | While these visions did appear.” Also in the same play Theseus reminded us “as imagination bodies forth | The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen | Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing | A local habitation and a name.” So it is in The Tempest, when Prospero steps outside the fourth wall and describes what we have seen as an “insubstantial pageant”:

… These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.

And so it is in Tempest-Tost at its end. Except that in truth it isn’t the end: Robertson Davies’ conjured his spirits back into existence for the sequels Leaven of Malice and A Mixture of Frailties.

[Alena Gromova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely love this kind of irony and absurdity and so happy there’s more to read and spend some time in the company of these ludicrous characters <З

***
She cried softly and persistently.

***
He was with a with a knot of three girls, one of whom was Miss Bonnie-Susan Tompkins, known as The Torso. She was a lip-biter, an eye-roller, a sucker-in and a blower-out of breath. Her energy was delightful for five minutes, and exhausting after ten.

***
Solly’s face was white with anger and humiliation. But he took care not to bang the door.

***
The only real difficulty lies in balancing the level of the work against the level of the misery.

***
“I see,” said Valentine, in a voice which suggested that she saw more than Nellie.

[M.L. Rio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Downton Abbey meets Slings and Arrows. A light and delightful portrait of small-town theatre.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I didn't enjoy it as much as Fifth Business, I'm going to be fair and rate it against 'all the books'. The Frederick Davidson narration was pitch perfect, he captured the stage-play quality of the book and its dialogue perfectly. Davies is wry and full of astute observations - I'll look forward to finding out what follies lie ahead for the good folks of Salterton.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tempest-Tost is a gentle social satire that tells the story of a community theater group in a small Canadian city putting on a production of The Tempest. It's the first of Davies's two "Hey, let's put on a show!" novels, the second being The Lyre of Orpheus from the Cornish Trilogy. It's also Davies's first novel, and it comes across as a little simpler and less metaphysical than the latter book, and also a little more purely enjoyable as a story.

The novel has a true ensemble cast, and Davies uses his characters to explore variations on a theme in a very Jane Austen-like way. As Pride and Prejudice explores the nature of marriage by showing us lots of different couples, Davies digs into different types of intelligence—intellectual, academic, emotional, social, moral, practical—by showing us his many characters' strengths and blind spots.

You might be a successful university professor, but alienate everyone you know with your pompousness. You might be an excellent teacher of mathematics, but suppress your every emotional impulse for forty years. You might be a teenage girl primarily interested in boys and clothes, but have the tact to charm and soothe those who are out of sorts. You might be a brilliant musician, but your inability to recognize social norms makes you an outcast. You might be a highly competent engineer, but you lack the judgement to know when a simpler solution would do just as well. Your rich upbringing may have made you lazy, but you still have a strong moral sense that you can't ignore.

While Davies is definitely aware of the benefits of different kinds of intelligence, it's clear his sympathies lie with the the side of life that is intuitive, artistic, and cannot be predicted or controlled by logic and planning. This to me is the essence of his work from first to to last novel.

One day he tore the Plan of Conduct out of his book and burned it; it seemed to him to be stupid and worthless, an insult to what he felt. Indeed his whole concept of life as something which could be governed by schemes in pocketbooks appeared to him suddenly to be trivial and contemptible.

[Rafa Sánchez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Divertidísima comedia, entorno al proyecto de una función teatral para aficionados, durante el verano. La obra elegida es La Tempestad, de Shakespeare, lo que da pie a un repaso a la sociedad de un pequeño pueblo canadiense (Salterton). La elección de una directora profesional le da un toque exquisito para contrastar la calidad de la función. En resumen, se puede decir que la lectura es muy divertida, con continiuos golpes de humor sutil, no exento de profundidad psicológica en algunos pasajes... Robertsón Davies era un guasón y en ésta, su primera novela, lo demuestra claramente. No dejaré de leer el resto de novelas.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd forgotten how much I love Robertson Davies! So funny and written with such compassion for his characters; I sometimes describe John Irving as the modern Dickens, but actually it's Davies. Irving is the American Dickens. (It was Irving's admiration for Davies that initially started me on the Deptford Trilogy, though, so they're both influenced by the master of character.)
NOTE: I HATE that the Goodreads description of the book includes a spoiler for the end!

[Sera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, and at times, laugh out loud moments about a group of local theater members who get together to perform the Tempest. Hector was my favorite character. He's the most pathetic but also the funniest character in the book.

I recommend this book. I may continue to with the trilogy. We'll see how things go.

[Alberto Illán Oviedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Qué puede salir mal en la representación de La Tempestad, de Shakespeare, a cargo de una compañía aficionada de teatro, formada por algunos de los vecinos de la inexistente ciudad canadiense de Salterton? Este es el contexto en el que se mueven, respiran, se divierten, viven y, en algunos casos, se sabotean los personajes que dan vida a esta interesante, amena y divertida novela. La primera de las 11 que escribió el dramaturgo canadiense Robertson Davies, en un estilo, para mí, muy británico. Una delicia.

[Ekaterina Samoilova · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was such a joy to read this book. I laughed a lot. It is written with so much gentleness and kindness toward its characters. I want to stay longer in Salterton with its heroes

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this is his first published novel, every aspect of Davies' style that I enjoyed in the Deptford trilogy - the genial, avuncular prose stylist - is fully-formed here. What makes Davies so distinctive is his keen eye for human pettiness. Lots of novelists write extensively on the small flaws that are foundational to the human psyche, but very few do it with the peculiar combination of wit, affection, and indulgence that Davies does. The efforts of a small-town theater troupe to put on a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest provides ample room for Davies to bounce his characters' flaws off of each other, while reminding us that his is always the strongest voice on his stages.

Surely Davies has his reasons for creating fictional small towns rather appropriating using real ones - even though the play-staging elements of Tempest-Tost are clearly based on Davies' actual experience, there's something about his choice of setting that fits his aims. I like that even though his small-town Canada is somewhat romanticized, in that it seems almost too pleasant, it's not idealized, in that its limitations are front and center. The protagonist, virginal love-struck math teacher Hector Mackilwraith, is a case in point - his infatuation for town babe Griselda Webster strikes just the right balance between pathetic and sympathetic. Something about how Davies draws his disciplined strengths and his emotional weaknesses makes sense for his journey through Salterton's over-proud social scene, and his plan to seize the role of Gonzalo to impress a girl is both endearing and cringe-worthy.

And at the risk of getting too mechanical with the analysis, the same is true of the other characters who have enough screen time. While his skills at characterization would be even better by the Deptford trilogy, here all the characters have their own personalities, and their interactions, such as when Hector is competing with out-of-town rake Roger Tasset and well-meaning Oedipal victim Solly Bridgetower for Griselda's hand, are usually very funny. His plotting could use some work (for example, Fredegonde's wine-making in the first scene is forgotten about for the remainder of the book until it makes a noticeable but pointless appearance in the very last scene), yet I'm glad Davies resisted the temptation to go meta and with a play-within-a-play concept or something similar. There's plenty of drama to be found in even the smallest spaces if you know where to look, and Davies found plenty. Hopefully the next two volumes in the Salterton trilogy will improve upon the first.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in the Salterton trilogy. Very amusing satire about an amateur theater group. I found the character of Hector Mackilwraith particularly funny with his approach to teaching:

"It was in dealing with stupid pupils that his wit was shown. A dunce, who had done nothing right, would not receive a mark of Zero from him, for Hector would geld the unhappy wretch of marks not only for arriving at a wrong solution, but for arriving at it by a wrong method. It was thus possible to announce to the class that the dunce had been awarded minus thirty-seven out of a possible hundred marks; such announcements could not be made more than two or three times a year, but they always brought a good laugh. And that laugh, it must be said, was not vaingloriously desired by Hector as a tribute to himself, but only in order that it might spur the dunce on to greater mathematical effort. That it never did so was one of the puzzles which life brought to Hector, for he was convinced of the effectiveness of ridicule in making stupid boys and girls intelligent."

Haven't we all suffered from a teacher like this? Therefore, it is satisfying to see the effects of ridicule upon Hector in his stupidity at romance at the end of the book! Just enough for a comeuppance, not too much...

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robertson Davies truly has a knack for capturing the quintessential small town. I read this novel as part of the required reading in my second year Canadian Lit course at the University of Toronto. I entered into the Salterton Trilogy with skepticism, fearfully remembering the awful reading of Fifth Business back in high school (I loved the novel, hated the teacher)

Tempest Tost is remarkably humorous, and each character is highly neurotic, ignorant, and naive--but that's all part of their charm! Loosely based on Kingston, ONT where Davies hails from, Tempest-Tost centers around a group of amateur townspeople eagerly putting on a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. What ensues instead is a confusing mumble jumble of shenanigans, backstage dramas, and sarcastic wit, all trademarks of Davies wonderfully funny prose. His sense of humor shines through in all aspects of the characters. Definitely a must read, and I cannot wait to finish the rest of the trilogy, hopefully this summer. A homage to the concept of small town Kingston life being somehow more serene and intellectually stimulating then other towns.Whether this is true, I do not know.

[Mcruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entretenido y bien escrito. Quizá un poco irregular y con algunos momentos innecesariamente largos, como la inacabable velada en la casa de Solly, pero en general es un buen libro con caracteres muy bien construidos y estructura bastante dinámica. Me ha gustado especialmente el desenlace. Una buena opción que ya adelanta las mejores características del autor.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sería más bien un 4'5 por ese final tan abrupto y extremadamente abierto para la inmensa mayoría de los personajes (muy pintorescos e interesantes) que Davies nos ha presentado a lo largo de toda la historia. En pocas palabras: me he quedado con muchas ganas de más.

"A merced de la tempestad" se ubica en la ciudad de provincias imaginada Salterton, en Canadá en torno a finales de los años 40 o principios de los 50 del siglo pasado.
La novela nos muestra cómo el grupo Teatro Joven de Salterton, un grupo amateur orquestado por una señora que iba para reina de Inglaterra y se tuvo que contentar con esposa de hombre de negocios, Nellie Forrester, monta en primavera una representación "La Tempestad" en los jardines de una de las familias más acaudaladas.
El montaje es una excusa para que conozcamos a toda la miríada de personajes que forman parte de la compañía teatral. Entre ellos hay de todo: soldados que solo buscan ligotear, jovencitas que empiezan a ser mujeres y a lidiar con la atención de los chicos, hombres de mediana edad que de pronto sienten la fiebre del teatro y hasta viejas glorias que mejor se estarían en casa... pintando monas/cantando ídems. Son cerca de una veintena de personajes a cada cual más interesante, peculiar y risible (porque anda y que no son risibles los saltertonianos) y las relaciones que los van entrelazando y tejen la vida social de esta ciudad se van desplegando ante nosotros a medida que la obra va tomando forma. Entre todos ellos, destacan unos cuantos como el profesor de matemáticas Héctor Mackilwraith, cuarentón de escasa imaginación que se enamora por primera vez de prácticamente una niña; la organizadora Nellie y su supuesta mejor amiga de la infancia, la actriz profesional Valentine Rich, la familia Webster (en cuyo jardín se va a celebrar la representación) y dos jóvenes solteros que cortejarán a una de las Webster: el soñador pero enmadrado Solly Bridgetown y el mujeriego soldado Roger Tasset.
Con toda esta "fauna" por ahí pululando, queda muy claro que esta es una novela de personajes y, desde luego, para mí han sido lo más divertido y memorable de la novela: cómo están construidos y cómo Salterton parece cobrar vida gracias a ellos.
Robertson Davies aprovecha las coordenadas que ha inventado para dar un repaso de arriba abajo y del derecho y del revés a la sociedad de su época, a los sueños de grandeza de las pequeñas ciudades provincianas canadienses en aquellos años, y también vemos claramente reflejados todo tipo de personalidades humanas en sus mejores y más patéticos momentos. Y todo ello usando un sentido del humor que varía de lo más fino y sutil a lo las socarrón, sarcástico y hasta hiriente. Los personajes se dicen de todo unos a otros, destapan las incoherencias del vecino sin ver las propias, y los diálogos se convierten en pura diversión para los lectores, que asistimos en primera fila a una apasionante y muy divertida batalla campal.
Robertson Davies es un autor que se maneja como pez en el agua con los dobles sentidos, ironías, sarcasmos, citas de otras obras y crítica social a todos los colectivos posibles, de modo que también el cómo está escrita me chifla.
¿La media estrellita que no acabo de darle? Precisamente el hecho de que, al haber abierto las historias de unos 20 personajes, esperaba que la conclusión fuera un poco más cerrada para más personajes de los que se nos cuenta.
En otras palabras: básicamente, tenemos solo la resolución al arco argumental de unos pocos personajes y, del resto, nos quedamos sin saber más.
Y ya, ya sé que esta es solo la primera novela ubicada en Salterton de las tres que Davies escribió... Pero por sí misma resulta un tanto decepcionante y muy abierta para mi gusto.
Así que quedo a la espera de continuar con "Levadura de malicia", la siguiente novela saltertiana) y ver si me cuentan algo más sobre estos personajes con los que tanto me he divertido.
Todo un descubrimiento de este año; un autor del que me apetece leerlo todo y que, gracias a Libros del Asteroide, voy a poder disfrutar un buen rato (ya tengo cuatro títulos más de Davies esperando en casa... Así de claro he tenido que este autor es para mí).

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first of anything Robertson Davies I have read. Rather delightful character development and little conflicts make this appealing. Salterton is obviously a stand-in for Kingston, Ontario. I think I've been to those shore defences that "Gristle" and Roger wandered off to.

Davies' description of a character's stomach growling (and stomach growling in general) was priceless. Mid-century Canadiana.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is basically a 1950s Canadian version of Waiting for Guffman, complete with pitifully socially awkward characters, each with a very unrealistic conception of her own abilities. Poor Hector.

[Terris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute, light, and entertaining!

[Txe Polon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buenos personajes, divertido desarrollo, elaborado estilo, pero al fin y al cabo una obra de entretenida intrascendencia. Y con ganas de leer más de este autor.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in October 2004.

In some ways, the staging of an amateur theatrical event must seem to be an ideal focus for a satirist. The inflated egos, naked ambition displayed over so small an achievement is an obvious tool to dissect the vanities of the world. Its very obviousness is the problem: how do you use this subject without coming across as trite? Here, then, we see that to choose this as the background for his debut novel Robertson Davies was actually showing a high level of self-confidence. (This was perhaps to be expected in a writer who was already an experienced journalist and playwright.)

So what does Davies do to make Tempest-Tost an interesting variation on the amateur dramatics as satire theme? It's sharper than most, for a start - full of acid yet subtle jokes at the small mindedness of the Canadian provincial. (It would be just about possible to read Robertson Davies without realising that it is meant to be funny.) The majority of the jokes are character based; each member of the cast is exposed in some shortcoming, which usually arises because they are not as good at something as they think they are; in the Aristotelian manner, their downfall comes from hubris and yet this is not made tragic. (This is something which changes somewhat in Davies' later novels. In A Mixture of Frailties, the third novel of the Salterton trilogy of which this is the first, Solly Bridgetower, whose problem is his devotion to a demanding, suffocating and ungrateful mother, has his life made miserable after her death by the malicious provisions of her will.) Bringing in the director of the production - Macbeth, by the way, hence the title (even if it is quoted from The Tempest), from outside also makes this different. Valentine Rich is a native Saltertonian, who has gone to New York and become a success there as a theatre director. She returns as a favour to an old schoolfriend, and causes a great deal of tension because of her outlook, her refusal to admit that things cannot be arranged in Salterton's amateur theatre as they could be in professional New York productions. She has no truck with the idea that some people must be asked to do things for political reasons rather than because of their suitability. The clash between her values and the cosy traditional ideas of the amateur group enhance the satire enormously.

The third way that Davies moves Tempest-Tost out of the common is by the power of his characterisation. Though the various Saltertonians in the novel initially seem to be rather clichéd stereotypes - the popular, pretty young girl, the stuffy schoolmaster, the pedantic university lecturer, the tomboy, the taciturn gardener, and so on - they are almost all gradually revealed to be more complex than that with complicated interactions. Then there is the time and place - the sexual hangups of the mid twentieth century play a big part (especially the innocence of young men and women compared to their successors only a few years later), as do the special insecurities of a backwater town in Ontario (fiction Salterton's greatest claim to fame is that it was at one point considered as a possible capital for the Dominion of Canada). Like the inhabitants of Sinclair Lewis' even more bitter Main Street, the small mindedness of Salterton's inhabitants is quite amazing, and is (paradoxically) greatest amongst those who consider themselves the town's sophisticated elite.

Tempest-Tost is a wonderfully witty satire, full of barbed humour and, more than that, it is a novel full of memorable characters.

[Ryan Goldie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something extraordinarily peculiar about Davies' works in that, by all intents and purposes, they should be boring as all hell. Tempest-Tost, just like Fifth Business, centres around a group of unremarkable peopl in an unremarkable place, it is set apart only by the plot which sees them navigate an unremarkable performance of one of Shakespeare's most unremarkable plays. And yet, just like with Fifth Business, I am compelled to read on more so than any story of high-adventure or great political drama. This is why he captures the life of rural Ontario so well, it is at once boring yet enthralling, dull yet enchanting, simple yet full of pomp and circumstance. As a theatre nerd who grew up in small town Ontario I can identify many of the characters he depicts in my own life as well which brings an extra delight to my read and I would highly recommend this to any other theatre lovers out there. But more generally I think any small town Canadian would identify strongly with this book, and if anyone is curious about Canadian culture outside urban centres, I think this is your perfect chance to catch a glimpse.

While not as exciting an ending as Fifth Business, Tempest-Tost is more consistent in its engagment of the reader. The interwoven storylines of love, lust, and jealousy run the risk of becoming confusing and risk tripping over themselves, but Davies' handled them remarkably well. He expertly shows us scenes from multiple perspectives without having to backtrack or replay what has already happened. The end may come as a slight anticlimax to some, but I think this is an honest end to the types of lives led in Salterton, real scandals are infrequent enough that the slightest incident incites enough gossip to gloss over the previous event as people grasp at anything to talk about, and so life simply moves. The slowness of rural life seems to make life appear to move faster, an odd paradox captured in all of Davies' works.

[Oen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first Robertson Davies novel I read. It was loaned to me by my friend Tom, who highly recommended it to me. He was SO right!!!! Great characters, lyrical prose, wit, true-to-life situations, compassionate world view, and a fabulous sense of humor. Reading this prompted me to immediately go out and read the next two in this trilogy, and three other trilogies by the same author. He is now one of my all time favorite novelists. All his books get 5 stars from me, except maybe for Cunning Man, which I'm now reading, and am not entirely sure of. I think that was his last book before he died. A GREAT writer-philosopher!