Reading Lovers’ Vows as a fan of Mansfield Park

Here I am again reading something nobody reads, but it seemed amiss, did it not, that I never read Lovers’ Vows before when Mansfield Park is my favourite Austen novel?

Let’s see what the fuss is about. 

Lovers’ Vows 

An adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s Das Kind der Liebe, the play was first performed at Covent Garden in 1798, about 2 decades after Sheridan’s most celebrated plays. Jane Austen was 23 (if she saw it onstage, though she might have just read the text).

The first thing I’m going to say is that I’m not surprised the play was a hit: it’s got premarital sex and a son born out of wedlock and star-crossed lovers, etc. The second thing is that I’m not surprised it’s rarely read or staged today and mostly known as the play featured in Jane Austen’s novel. It’s not a great play—sometimes even ridiculous (luckily it’s quite short). 

Lovers’ Vows has two plotlines that aren’t entirely separate. In one plot, a soldier named Frederick returns home to find his mother Agatha ill, penniless, and on the streets, and then he discovers himself to be the result of an affair between her and Baron Wildenhaim, who long ago left the country. 

In the other plot, Baron Wildenhaim, recently back in Germany after his wife’s death, is trying to find out if his daughter Amelia wants to accept the marriage proposal from the affected Count Cassel. She however is in love with her tutor, poor Mr Anhalt. 

At some point, the desperate Frederick, tired of begging, tries to rob two rich men and gets imprisoned, but one of the two men turns out to be the Baron. This is the stuff of romance! The play is full of coincidences and nonsense and melodrama. The idea that things are not as they seem—a favourite theme of Jane Austen and Shakespeare—is not to be found here: the characters are quite straightforward. A greater playwright may have increased the stakes or made things a bit difficult: here the knots are quickly untied. 

However, to be fair, Lovers’ Vows is not without a few things of interest. Amelia is very forward, for a young lady in the 18th century. 

“MR ANHALT […] The subject I came to you upon was marriage.

AMELIA A very proper subject from the man who has taught me love, and I accept the proposal [curtsying].

MR ANHALT Again you misconceive and confound me.

AMELIA Ay, I see how it is—You have no inclination to experience with me “the good part of matrimony:” I am not the female with whom you would like to go “hand in hand up hills, and through labyrinths”—with whom you would like to “root up thorns; and with whom you would delight to plant lilies and roses.” No, you had rather call out, “O liberty, dear liberty.”” 

(Act 3 scene 2)

Amelia alludes to—and confesses—her feelings first. None of Jane Austen’s heroines would speak in such a way. 

The class issues—both the depiction of the lower class as noble and the upper class as base, and the unequal marriages—are interesting. Elizabeth Inchbald (and perhaps von Kotzebue in the original?) had clear messages about marrying for love, treating women properly, and atoning for past mistakes, which Jane Austen must have liked. Dramatically, the confrontation scene between Baron Wildenhaim and Count Cassel is interesting: the Count acknowledges his own villainy and turns it against the Baron, forcing him to examine himself. 

Now you’re going to ask if there are parallels between Lovers’ Vows and Mansfield Park. There are a few. Mr Anhalt is a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram’s going to be. Agatha is taken from her poor family and placed with a rich family, like Fanny Price. Count Cassel is a cad, like Henry Crawford. Agatha is seduced and has sex outside marriage, like Maria Bertram. But these similarities only emphasise the startling differences between the play and Mansfield Park: Jane Austen’s novel is much deeper, subtler, and more sophisticated.  

Lovers’ Vows in Mansfield Park 

Look at the scene in Mansfield Park where the characters argue about which play to perform: 

“All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively dismissed with yet warmer objections.” (Ch.14) 

I only just read The School for Scandal—imagine if the characters picked Sheridan’s play! 

One must ask, does Jane Austen pick Lovers’ Vows because she likes it, or because she thinks it’s a stupid play that demonstrates the bad taste of Mr Yates and emphasises the impropriety of staging such a play in Sir Thomas’s absence? I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that Jane Austen personally thinks it’s a great play. Either way, many (obtuse) readers complain about Mansfield Park and call Fanny Price a priggish bore partly because they impose modern thinking on the novel (saying what’s wrong with staging a play at home?), but mainly because they don’t know Lovers’ Vows. Fanny isn’t fond of the plan to act when Sir Thomas’s away, but she becomes strongly opposed to the play only when she reads it: 

“Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make.” (ibid.) 

Read the play and you’ll see why. 

Apart from that, rereading the theatrical episode in Mansfield Park is now much more interesting when I know the characters they’re playing. It’s quite a joke that the dim-witted Mr Rushworth plays Count Cassel, who is a cad, though they’re both foppish. There’s also something rather funny about the way Maria and Julia Bertram fight to play Agatha, when Henry Crawford plays Frederick, her son, and the role of Agatha’s former lover, Baron Wildenhaim, goes to Mr Yates—Henry and Maria flirt with each other whilst playing mother and son (hello, Jane?). But of course the way Austen sets it up is perfect: Agatha and Baron Wildenhaim only have a couple of lines together at the end whereas she and Frederick have relatively long scenes together—scenes that involve touching. As Mary Crawford says to Fanny: 

“… I looked in upon them five minutes ago, and it happened to be exactly at one of the times when they were trying not to embrace, and Mr Rushworth was with me. I thought he began to look a little queer…” (Ch.18) 

Funnily enough: 

“As far as [Fanny] could judge, Mr Crawford was considerably the best actor of all: he had more confidence than Edmund, more judgment than Tom, more talent and taste than Mr Yates. She did not like him as a man, but she must admit him to be the best actor, and on this point there were not many who differed from her.” (ibid.)

I wonder if Jane Austen’s suspicious of actors—ironically, it’s whilst being an actor that Henry drops his act towards Julia and makes obvious his preference for her sister. 

So what about Edmund and Mary Crawford? Edmund plays Mr Anhalt and Mary plays Amelia. Now when I have read Lovers’ Vows, I can see better Fanny’s pain as she watches Edmund and Mary Crawford rehearse the love scene, especially when Fanny has grown up with Edmund the way (I think) Amelia has grown up with Mr Anhalt. 

Regardless of Jane Austen’s judgement of the literary merit of Lovers’ Vows, she uses it to great effect in Mansfield Park, moves the plot forward, and reveals a lot about every single character in her novel—knowing Elizabeth Inchbald’s play deepens my understanding and appreciation of the novel.