The Custom of the Country (c.1619), by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, is a play dominated by transformation.  Through the figure of Rutillio, the sub-plot exposes the physical effects of excessive sexual activity.  Enslaved in a male brothel, the insatiable lust of female city customers and sexual disease corrode his male form.  The threat to English male physicality is distanced by the play’s foreign setting and Rutillio’s ultimate recovery.  Despite this deflection of anxiety, the play’s exposure of male frailty is powerful and draws upon contemporary fears of national effeminacy.  The tangible effects of Rutillio’s sexual overindulgence emphasise the real consequences of heterosexual excess for English men.  Does the play offer a didactic lesson or is it a humorous purging of male anxiety presented on stage?  Examining the contribution of scholars, such as Moulton, the paper will reflect upon our twenty-first century interpretation of the early modern male identity.

—Lynsey Blandford, Independent scholar