A tribute to the theater and its life behind the scenes, this novel revolves around the Salterton Youth Theater, an amateur theater company, as it puts on a Production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The Production will be held in the beautiful gardens of St. Agnes, where George Alexander Webster resides with his two daughters, and the preparations have brought about an upheaval in the gardens as well as in the lives of all those involved. The life of Hector Mackilwraith, the stubborn math teacher and theater company treasurer, will be especially altered after he decides to spice up his insubstantial life by showing up to casting and is surprisingly cast in one of the leading roles. Un homenaje al teatro y a la vida entre bastidores, esta novela revolotea en torno al Teatro Joven de Salterton, una compañía amateur, que va a poner en marcha una representación de La tempestad de Shakespeare. La producción se llevará a cabo en los jardines de St. Agnes, donde George Alexander Webster reside con sus dos hijas, y los preparativos para la misma revolucionan los jardines al igual que las vidas de quienes participan en ella. En especial se altera la vida del taciturno profesor de matemáticas y tesorero de la compañía Hector Mackilwraith, quien se propone variar su vida insustancial presentándose al casting y quien asombrosamente consigue hacerse con uno de los papeles principales.

Robertson Davies, novelist, playwright, literary critic and essayist, was born in 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario. He was educated at Queen's University, Toronto, and Balliol College, Oxford. Whilst at Oxford he became interested in the theatre and from 1938 until 1940 he was a teacher and actor at the Old Vic in London. He subsequently wrote a number of plays. In 1940 he returned to Canada, where he was literary editor of Saturday Night, an arts, politics and current affairs journal, until 1942, when he became editor and later publisher of the Peterborough Examiner. Several of his books, including The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, had their origins in an editorial column. In 1962 he was appointed Professor of English at the University of Toronto, and in 1963 was appointed the first Master of the University's Massey College. He retired in 1981, but remained Master Emeritus and Professor Emeritus. He held honorary doctorates from twenty-six universities in the UK, the USA and Canada, and he received numerous awards for his work, including the Governor-General's Award for The Manticore in 1973. It is as a writer of fiction that Robertson Davies achieved international recognition, with such books as The Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost, Leaven Of Malice, winner of the Leacock Award for Humour, and A Mixture Of Frailties); The Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore and World Of Wonders); The Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize, and The Lyre of Orpheus); Murther & Walking Spirits; and The Cunning Man. His other work includes One Half of Robertson Davies, The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies, Robertson Davies: The Well-Tempered Critic, The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, High Spirits, A Voice From The Attic and The Merry Heart, a posthumous collection of autobiography, lectures and essays. Many of his books are published by Penguin.

Robertson Davies died in December 1995. Malcolm Bradbury described him as 'one of the great modern novelists', and in its obituary The Times wrote: 'Davies encompassed all the great elements of life...His novels combined deep seriousness and psychological inquiry with fantasy and exuberant mirth.'

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"Impudent, amused, and amusing, and sterling entertainment."  “New York Times, on the English-Language edition

"Ingenious, erudite, entertaining. . . . Davies displays all the qualities of a latter-day Trollope and shows us what modern Canada is like."  “Observer, on the English-Language edition