Lover’s Vows

Lovers’ Vows is the 1798 play by Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821), her adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s German drama Das Kind der Liebe, and one of the most famous plays of the Georgian stage. The plot concerns Agatha, seduced and abandoned in her youth by a baron, and her illegitimate soldier son Frederick, whose chance encounter with his unknown father forces the baron to confront his past and make amends, while the baron’s daughter Amelia conducts her own frank courtship of her tutor. The play’s treatment of seduction and female forwardness made it morally controversial, and it is now best remembered as the play whose amateur rehearsal scandalises the household in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Inchbald adapted it during her reign as a leading London playwright. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.