TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Lovers Vows A Play in Five Acts by Mrs. Inchbald from the German of Kotzebue This e-text is taken from the 5th edition published in 1798. As the PREFACE. makes clear, "Lovers Vows." is not a direct translation of Kotzebue's play "Child of Love" (sometimes known as "Natural Son"). Due to cache limitations of my otherwise beloved WebTV™ Classic, I have had to place each act on a separate page. In the original, the PREFACE., PROLOGUE., which is spoken, and DRAMATIS PERSONAE are on individual pages. I put the PREFACE. on its own and placed the other two before ACT I. The same is true of the EPILOGUE., which I tacked on to the end of ACT V. The print copy has no blank lines between speeches. The speakers' names appear two spaces from the left margin and are in italics followed by a period. On the same line starts the speech. For ease of reading, in the plaintext version I've created, I have placed the speakers' names in CAPS and skipped a line between speeches. I placed a short divider between scenes which is not in the original. Nor is the END ACT notices. In the printed text, when a character enters or exits, the name is often in all CAPS. I retained this. In the original, some of the spoken words are emphasised by italics. In the plaintext version I've created, I have used underscores (_) in front of and behind the word/s that are italicized in the print copy. An example: The _underscores_ indicate italicized text. In the original, the EPILOGUE., was single spaced. For some unknown reason, in the plaintext version, my hard returns wouldn't work until I double spaced it. The stage directions, actors in the DRAMATIS PERSONAE., and the speakers' names were all italicized. I ignored that in the plaintext version. In the HTML version I've created, I have used italics, centering, etc. as they are used in the printed copy. For ease of reading, I have placed the speakers' names in bold and skipped a line between speeches. I've also included and tags in the appropriate places. [You will, however, have to remove the divider code between the scenes in Acts II. - V.] The Historical Note (RWC/Oxford) is NOT part of the play or the edition I transcribed. I typed in the text and did the initial proofing and the HTML coding. Further proofing done by family members Marlett Hurt and Kerry Siniard. Kelly Hurt KLHurt64@msn.com