Not dramatic enough for you, Johnny?
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"In chapters 12 through 20 the play theme—an extraordinary achievement—is developed on the lines of fairy-tale magic and of fate." These chapters are indeed as outstanding as Nabokov praises them to be, and they come after very careful preparation. Austen needed to give her characters room to emerge into this situation, and her removal of Sir Thomas and prelude to the play at Sotherton both leaves the characters inhibited…and then gives them a taste of inhibition which leaves them wanting more. How many times do we not realize our freedom and capacities until we are able to taste life with them, to go far enough to realize (a) we are passing our old borders and (b) we can go still farther? The characters in Mansfield Park are young, and testing the limits is a part of growing up and maturing. Austen, however, has special reasons for casting the "play theme" in the negative light our avatar Fanny sees it in.
John Yates is "the first to appear and the last to vanish." Blake Snyder in Save the Cat! writes that solid dramatic construction is partly based around the linked ideas of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis: the action begins with all in a state of status quo, an inciting incident turns things on their head to a point of complete opposition, and happiness is only achieved when the two situations harmoniously blend together, for neither one was suitable. John Yates is Mansfield Park's great inciter, the last push the characters need to break out of their stuffy early-modern life and liberate themselves from convention. When Yates leaves, recalling archetypes from the Pied Piper onward, he has wrought a series of changes which will carry through the story. He has served a purpose by just being there and being himself. (Yates's return at the end of the novel has no motivation except that he must take part in the overall spirit of redemption for the recalcitrant characters.)
Yates calls his theatrical party "bewitching" from the first. Magical terminology, Nabokov happily points out, for Yates is a Romantic almost desperate to see the exciting in everything. One wonders why Austen did not utilize him more as a foil to Fanny, almost desperate for things to be "normal" all the time.
"Yates bewails the fact that humdrum life or rather casual death prevented the staging." Here is why the play is a matter of negative consequence for the characters. Recall that Mansfield Park is set in 1811-1813, a period when England was at war with America across the ocean and Napoleon in Europe, when the Industrial Revolution's steam was beginning to power more and more of the country and bring about a sweeping reorganization of society—which, we could argue, would culminate in the decline and fall of the aristocracy who had always been in charge. Jane Austen's way of life no longer exists. But when it did, the upper classes, people like the Bertrams, had the money, power, and education to take the fore in all matters British, and the real world was full of enough to handle and worry about. Hence Fanny's eventual questions about slave labor in the Antilles carry even more weight…it is a sincerely serious note in a light setting.
Austen's point is that the young Bertrams and those on their level were the ones who would have to deal with a changing world with all-important consequences to their decisions—the men would lead in Parliament and the army, the women would keep social bonds intact and morally teach by example. Only a more-or-less stable England could combat Napoleon and wisely proceed with domestic reform. But here, this generation is busying themselves in not life but its imitation, a melodrama full of "melo"—adultery, illegitimacy, seduction—and this becomes the center of their existence! They are engaging in the same behavior as a "lower" class they're supposed to be uplifting and saving! And enjoying it! When Yates says that the old dowager couldn't have picked a worse time to die, he implies that art and invention are more important than reality and the factual. It may help a little more to remember at this point that Keats, Shelley, and Byron were alive and active…art was even more seductive and dangerous in the view of those in power. And Jane Austen would have been a grand candidate for Republican Party membership, as I said before.
So the idea of these youngsters putting on a show, which a hundred years later was nothing more than fun, innocent source material for Rodgers and Hart, is now an act of subversion with lurid overtones. It is irresponsible not just for ignoring reality, but for putting emotionally confused characters into a situation where art and life will tangle themselves up and make them more unstable. Fanny refuses to totter over Austen's precipice. She understands stability and security, and she knows there are slaves in the Antilles. Real life is hard-wrought enough for us to invent more drama to pack into it.
The Ravenshaw dowager's death as foreshadowing Sir Thomas's own return home, interrupting ANOTHER Lovers' Vows. Though warm-hearted Sir Thomas is an agent of life, who will restore presence and order, not depart. Death leaves Yates still up and at them to perpetuate his vision. Life is too much for him to overcome in this situation.
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Henry Crawford proposes the Mansfield group act something, simply because it is "an as yet untasted pleasure." One of the major concepts in the novel is development, and Henry's idea of development is trying to live with as many varied experiences as possible, be they good or ill. If he ever had any idea of Austen's misgivings regarding this escapade, he, along with Tom, would be the first to ignore them. This statement also hints at what will attract Henry to Fanny later in the novel: a nice, sincere girl is a very untasted pleasure, and one he will strive to reach until he finds that such fruit is forbidden to someone of his character.
Edmund reacts with sarcasm, including a foreshadowing reference to "a tricky afterpiece." Edmund in his speech to his cohorts acts his way but brings the message down to their level. Knowing by now they will not react well to his usual sermonizing, he uses his eloquence to build some elaborate sarcasm. The problem is that Yates has already dropped the hint of inspiration into the Bertram circle, so Edmund's lofty talk only drives them on more. Dry sarcasm, by the way, was a great element of Austen's Style: the Bennets thrive on it.
The absence of Lovers' Vows in the selection of plays. Nabokov calls this "a magic trick of artistic fate," as the Bertrams and Crawfords ponder what play to put on until Tom decides that the abandoned Lovers' Vows will do for them just as well! To my more modern mind, this reads as stretching the point out so Austen can depict how enthusiastic everyone is regarding the enterprise.
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Austen has a trifold personal objection to Lovers' Vows: the subject matter of bastardy, the frank speeches of lovemaking, and above all that Agatha is a role unsuitable for a married girl. In Austen's world of proper marriages and behavior, a woman's suitability for matrimony was all that mattered. The sight of a lady of good breeding deliberately playing an out-of-wedlock mother was a hint at a personality far too unstable for a good union. If you want art to reflect and take precedence over life, Austen is saying, then you must in turn face the consequences of such an attitude.
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Henry and Yates, in the distribution of parts, react with cleverness and anger—Henry arranges for himself and Maria to play the son and mother so they can always be close, while Yates is ticked off that Julia, whom he has an eye on, gets a minor part. This scene is a natural extension of the specifics of the situation, and one which would be imitated in novels, "backstagers," and sitcoms for years to come: people acting in a play allow their lives to influence their parts in a circle sometimes tragic (A Double Life with Oscar-winner Ronald Colman), sometimes comic (Kurt Vonnegut's charming "Who Am I This Time?"). Austen did this long before it acquired the status of cliché, and also arranges it into the Structure of the book. Ne'er-do-well Henry only shows initiative when he is pursuing the opposite sex, and in the future he will carefully plan to make Fanny see him in a favorable light. Meanwhile, Yates's sticking up for Julia is a small sign that he may feel for her more deeply than the others, and this becomes clear at the end when he happily pairs up with Julia.
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