Lovers' Vows

Lovers' Vows (1798), a play by Elizabeth Inchbald, arguably best known now for having been featured in Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park (1814), is one of at least four adaptations of August von Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe (1780; literally "The Love Child," often translated as "Natural Son"), all of which were published between 1798 and 1800.

[1] Dealing as it does with sex outside marriage and illegitimate birth, Inchbald in the Preface to the published version declares herself to have been highly sensitive to the task of adapting the original German text for "an English audience."

It is cited by commentators as an object of antitheatricality and there has been considerable debate as to Austen's own views about the acceptability of the play.

[citation needed] As credited in the published version:[4] Act I: The play opens with Agatha being ejected from an inn when her money runs out.

Distraught, Agatha tells him that there is no certificate: she was seduced at the age of seventeen by Baron Wildenhaim upon promise of marriage.

Despite the resulting pregnancy, the Baron broke his promise and married another, wealthier woman, and Agatha, turned out of her home, struggled to make ends meet and raise her son alone.

Not knowing her relationship to him, the cottagers tell Agatha of the recent history of Baron Wildenhaim, now widowed and with a daughter.

Act III: Frederick, desperate as his begging has been unsuccessful, attempts to rob the Baron and the Count as they go hunting, not knowing who they are.