Lover's Vows (Dodo Press)

This is the first play I think I’ve ever read all the way through, but I loved it! It’s mostly a lighthearted romance, and yes, it’s picture-perfect and awkward, and it goes against all modern sensibilities, but if you look at it from the perspective of the people who first wrote and translated it, I think that’s forgivable.

The butler was one of my top favorite characters of all time! He was hilarious! I’m no good at writing poetry, but his stance on poetry vs. prose kept me laughing and made the play for me.

A quick, engaging, entertaining read. If I ever get the chance to see this play performed, I’d definitely be keen to go!

Lovers' Vows has been preserved from the obscurity it deserves by Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. This is the scandalous play that the Bertram and Crawford siblings rehearse but never perform. What a blessing for their audience. Most of the characters are repeatedly overcome by strong emotions, leading to frequent fainting and embracing, with occasional pauses for fortification from wine. There are a couple of mildly funny exchanges that the actors must have milked for all they were worth. The butler who insisted on speaking in rhyme reminded me of Prince Herbert in the Swamp Castle who just wanted to sing.

The epilogue (in rhyme) seems like a Georgian equivalent of the newsreel:

...So, of course, then, if prose is so tedious a crime,
It of show more consequence follows, there's virtue in rhime.
The best piece of prose that I've heard a long while,
Is what gallant Nelson has sent from THE NILE.
And had he but told us the story in rhime,
What a thing 'twou'd be; but, perhaps, he'd no time.
So, I'll do it myself—Oh! 'tis glorious news!
Nine sail of the line! Just a ship for each Muse.
As I live, there's an end of the French and their navy--
Sir John Warren has sent the Brest fleet to Old Davy.
'Tis in the Gazette, and that, every one knows,
Is sure to be truth, tho' 'tis written in prose.

Recommended mainly for readers who want to explore Jane Austen's use of this drama in Mansfield Park. show less

Like almost everyone else in the world, I only read this play because it figures strongly in the plot of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. The play is a bit silly and moralistic for readers more than two centuries removed from its origination. I think, however, it might work today if produced as a kind of farce. In my mind, I'm trying to cast my favorite local thespians in the various parts. Alas, one of the best of them, Hugh Metzler, has passed on.

Still, it does treat, as does Mansfield Park, the very real problems that exist when one's wealth and position lead them to bend moral laws to their own venal pursuits. Once again, we see a facet of the absolute evil inherited wealth regularly sponsors.

This play is really known today only through being reenacted by the main characters in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in a very humorous section midway through that novel. It's a very readable play with drama and humour, with themes of redemption and forgiveness (I wonder if it is ever performed today?). Not quite what I expected from the description in Mansfield Park but a god read.

This 1798 adaptation by Elizabeth Inchbald of the German play Das Kind der Liebe by August von Kotzebue was a surprisingly quick and easy read. The play, about an unwed mother and her illegitimate son, is in some aspects a typical melodrama but the morality advocated isn't of the Victorian variety.

I downloaded this from Project Gutenberg because I am rereading Mansfield Park and this is the play that Tom Bertram and the others decide to put on. Jane Austin's contemporary readers would have been familiar with the play but the scene in which Maria and Julia argue about who will play Agatha was a bit unclear to me. So glad I decided to take the time to read this!

This 1798 adaptation by Elizabeth Inchbald of the German play Das Kind der Liebe by August von Kotzebue was a surprisingly quick and easy read. The play, about an unwed mother and her illegitimate son, is in some aspects a typical melodrama but the morality advocated isn't of the Victorian variety.

I downloaded this from Project Gutenberg because I am rereading Mansfield Park and this is the play that Tom Bertram and the others decide to put on. Jane Austin's contemporary readers would have been familiar with the play but the scene in which Maria and Julia argue about who will play Agatha was a bit unclear to me. So glad I decided to take the time to read this!

The play the characters in Mansfield Park are rehearsing. Evidently in Jane Austen's time this was considered racy and inappropriate. Now it just reads like a schlocky romance with cardboard characters. There are some interesting parallels with Mansfield Park and it's a quick read, so if you like Mansfield Park give it a try.