Lovers' Vows

[dulcinea3]

I know that a number of us also read Lovers' Vows, the play that they were to portray at Mansfield Park.  What did you think of it?

Certainly a very melodramatic, over-the-top work!  It is interesting to see the parallel between the love story in it and Mansfield Park.  The relationships, familial or otherwise, between the characters is different, but the story is almost the same.

Baron Wildenhaim = Sir Thomas

Anhalt = Edmund

Amelia = Fanny/Edmund

Count Cassel = Henry Crawford

The Baron/Sir Thomas does not want Amelia/Edmund to marry beneath her/him.  Count Cassel/Crawford wants the hand of Amelia/Fanny, and the Baron/Sir Thomas encourages the match, although Amelia/Fanny does not want it, as she is in love with Anhalt/Edmund.  When it becomes obvious that Cassel/Crawford is an unrepentant rake, the Baron's/Sir Thomas' eyes are opened, and then he relents and approves the match between Amelia/Fanny and Anhalt/Edmund.

[Laurel]

Good analysis. That's pretty much what I had been thinking, too. It's too bad Gilbert and Sullivan did not turn it into an operetta.

I do not think there is anything immoral about the play. Its contemporary audience probably found it quite uplifting, which brings me back to the thought that it was probably the embraces between the sexes and the proposals of Amelia that would make the play unsuitable for young women to enact in a gentle home. The other objection might well be the Jacobin ideology of the playwright.

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dulcinea3 wrote:

I know that a number of us also read Lovers' Vows, the play that they were to portray at Mansfield Park. What did you think of it?

Certainly a very melodramatic, over-the-top work! It is interesting to see the parallel between the love story in it and Mansfield Park. The relationships, familial or otherwise, between the characters is different, but the story is almost the same.

Baron Wildenhaim = Sir Thomas

Anhalt = Edmund

Amelia = Fanny/Edmund

Count Cassel = Henry Crawford

The Baron/Sir Thomas does not want Amelia/Edmund to marry beneath her/him. Count Cassel/Crawford wants the hand of Amelia/Fanny, and the Baron/Sir Thomas encourages the match, although Amelia/Fanny does not want it, as she is in love with Anhalt/Edmund. When it becomes obvious that Cassel/Crawford is an unrepentant rake, the Baron's/Sir Thomas' eyes are opened, and then he relents and approves the match between Amelia/Fanny and Anhalt/Edmund.

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