Returning unexpected from his plantations in Antigua, Sir Thomas Bertram discovers the young people rehearsing an amateur production of Elizabeth Inchbald's "Lovers' Vows" (adapted from the German August von Kotzebue). Scandalized, he halts the play and burns the rehearsal scripts. Fanny Price is astonished that the play was ever thought appropriate, and considers the two leading female roles as "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".