Lovers’ Vows is a play translated and adapted by Elizabeth Inchbald from a German playwright August von Kotzebue’s Das Kind der Liebe (1780, literally "Love Child," or "Natural Son.")
There were at least four translations or adaptations of this play published between 1796 and 1800. Inchbald's version is the only one to have been performed. 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." Even so, she left the setting as Germany.
The play was first performed at Covent Garden on 11 October 1798, and was an immediate success: it ran for forty-two nights, making Covent Garden the most successful venture of that season. It went on to be performed in Bristol, Newcastle, Bath, and elsewhere. It was likewise successful as a print publication, though it also aroused controversy about its moral ambiguity.