Novel: Tempest-Tost

Overview
Tempest-Tost is set in the fictional Ontario town of Salterton and follows the comic unraveling of small-town life when an amateur theatrical society stages Shakespeare's The Tempest. The novel blends gentle satire with affectionate characterization, turning provincial manners and petty rivalries into a lively study of human vanity and desire. Robertson Davies introduces a close-knit cast whose personal dramas are amplified and refracted by their involvement in the play.

Plot
An earnest effort to mount The Tempest becomes the catalyst for a sequence of romantic entanglements, jealousies and social maneuvering. The rehearsals and preparations bring together a cross-section of Salterton's citizens, actors, would-be directors, admirers and critics, whose private ambitions clash with the town's public appearance. Mistaken intentions and overheard confidences turn everyday interactions into farcical complications, while the anticipated opening night promises a resolution that is as revealing as it is entertaining.
The production serves as a mirror and a stage: lines meant for Shakespeare begin to echo real feelings, and roles assumed for performance illuminate the characters' offstage identities. Tensions build not through melodrama but through the slow, comic accrual of misunderstandings and wounded pride, producing a finale that restores order while exposing the petty heroics that keep the community engaged with itself.

Characters
The ensemble is composed of people whose ambitions and illusions are both recognizable and sympathetically rendered. There is the would-be impresario who imagines himself a theatrical genius, the passionate but insecure actress whose romantic hopes propel much of the action, and assorted civic figures who view the play as a stage for social display. Each character brings a particular form of pretension or vulnerability, and Davies allows room for both ridicule and empathy.
Supporting personalities, family members, rivals and lovers, populate the margins with their own motives, creating a network of loyalties that both complicates and redeems the main players. The focus is less on heroic transformation than on the ways ordinary people adjust to small revelations, making forgiveness and self-awareness the novel's quieter rewards.

Themes and style
Satire and warmth coexist throughout the narrative: the novel critiques provincial snobbery and theatrical affectation while retaining an affectionate eye for human foibles. Shakespeare's The Tempest functions as thematic foil, with motifs of illusion, power and reconciliation echoing through the characters' domestic entanglements. Davies explores how art can both inflate egos and bring communities together, suggesting that theatrical play and social play are inseparable in their capacity to reveal and to heal.
The prose is witty, observant and richly textured, combining comic set pieces with psychologically astute asides. Dialogue and social observation drive the momentum, and the comedy emerges less from slapstick than from the skewed earnestness of people convinced of their own importance. Underneath the humor, moral complexity and a deep knowledge of human weakness give the novel a humane gravity.

Reception and legacy
Tempest-Tost established Robertson Davies as a perceptive chronicler of Canadian small-town life and launched the Salterton Trilogy, followed by Leaven of Malice and A Mixture of Frailties. Critics and readers have praised its blend of satire and compassion, and its ability to render theatrical ambition as a metaphor for communal life. The novel remains admired for its sharp social portraiture, its comic timing and its sympathetic treatment of characters who are at once ridiculous and recognizably human.