The Custom of the Country (1647 play)
Encyclopedia
The Custom of the Country is a Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy
written by John Fletcher
and Philip Massinger
, originally published in 1647
in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio
.
, when one of its primary sources, Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda by Cervantes
, was translated into English. Cinthio's
Hecatommithi also provided material for the play. Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels
, describes The Custom of the Country as an "old play" in an entry in his record book dated 22 November 1629
.
. The 1647 text provides this cast list: Joseph Taylor
, John Lowin
, John Underwood
, Robert Benfield
, Nicholas Tooley
, William Ecclestone
, Richard Sharpe
, and Thomas Holcombe
. (The folio provides the same cast list for two roughly contemporaneous plays in the canon, Fletcher's Women Pleased and Fletcher and Massinger's The Little French Lawyer.) The cast list indicates a date of first performance after Taylor joined the company in the Spring of 1619, and before Tooley's death in June 1623.
, in his wide-ranging survey of authorship problems in the Fletcher canon, arrives at a division of authorship that is essentially the same as those of earlier commentators like E. H. C. Oliphant:
The play was revived in adapted forms after the theatres re-opened with the Restoration
. Colley Cibber
's version, Love Makes a Man, dates to 1700
, while Charles Johnson's
The Country Lasses appeared in 1715
.
The play belongs to a sub-category of Fletcher works sometimes called "chastity plays" for their concern with that subject. This sexual emphasis disturbed many traditional critics, though The Custom of the Country has been cited as "one of the most lively and amusing" of Fletcher's chastity plays.
; he is also the suitor of Zenocia. Against her father Charino's advice, Zenocia prefers Arnoldo, a young man travelling with his older brother Rutilio. Arnoldo and Zenocia marry, and resist Clodio's attempt to claim his "right" with Zenocia; they escape with Clodio in hot pursuit. Reaching the seacoast, the three young people are waylaid by Leopold, the captain of a Portuguese vessel. The two young men escape by swimming to shore, but Zenocia falls into Leopold's clutches.
Leopold takes Zenocia to Lisbon
, and places her in the service of Hippolita, with the understanding that Hippolyta will advance his suit to Zenocia. Hippolyta, however, has fallen in love with a young man just arrived in town...who is Arnoldo, chasing after his lost wife. When Arnoldo resists Hippolita, she has him arrested under a false accusation of theft; but she relents, and intervenes to save him from the death sentence he receives. But when Hippolita realizes that Arnoldo loves Zenocia, she tries to have the girl strangled. The murder attempt is interrupted by the arrival of Manuel the Lisbon governor, with Clodio in tow; Zenocia is released. The frustrated Hippolita has recourse to witchcraft
: the witch Sulpitia causes Zenocia to sicken by melting a wax image of her. Arnoldo, however, sickens in sympathy with his wife, and Hippolita, still in love with him, is forced to relent. Clodio too gives up on his quest for Zenocia, and also renounces his commitment to droit de seigneur.
The related subplot concerns the adventures of Rutilio, who fights a duel with Manuel's arrogant young nephew Duarte and apparently kills him. Rutilio is unknowingly sheltered by his opponent's mother Guidomar, the arrested by the watch, then ransomed by Sulpitia for her sexual service. Rutilio is redeemd from this servitude by a recovered and repentant Duarte, and eventually marries Guidomar.
referred to the play in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie
; he is concerned to defend Restoration plays
from the charge of lewdness, and claims that there is more "bawdry" in this play than in all later plays combined.
The play was rarely staged even during the century after Fletcher's death, when his plays remained current on the stage. In 1998, it received a staged reading at the new Globe Theatre
in London.
Edith Wharton
entitled her 1913 novel The Custom of the Country
after this play.
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
written by John Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...
and Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.-Early life:The son of Arthur Massinger or Messenger, he was baptized at St....
, originally published in 1647
1647 in literature
The year 1647 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Thomas Hobbes becomes tutor to the future Charles II of England.* Plagiarist Robert Baron publishes his Deorum Dona, a masque, and Gripus and Hegio, a pastoral, which draw heavily on the poems of Edmund Waller and John Webster's...
in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio
Beaumont and Fletcher folios
The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...
.
Date and sources
The play is usually dated to c. 1619–23. It could not have been written earlier than 16191619 in literature
The year 1619 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Richard Burbage dies in March; his place as the star of the King's Men is filled by Joseph Taylor.*René Descartes has a dream that helps him develop his ideas on analytical geometry....
, when one of its primary sources, Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda by Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
, was translated into English. Cinthio's
Giovanni Battista Giraldi
Giovanni Battista Giraldi was an Italian novelist and poet. He appended the nickname Cinthio to his name and is commonly referred to by that name .Born at Ferrara, he was educated at the university there, and in 1525 became its professor of natural philosophy...
Hecatommithi also provided material for the play. Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, describes The Custom of the Country as an "old play" in an entry in his record book dated 22 November 1629
1628 in literature
The year 1628 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Ben Jonson is appointed city chronologer of London.*Ten-year-old Abraham Cowley produces his Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe....
.
Performance
The play was performed by the King's MenKing's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
. The 1647 text provides this cast list: Joseph Taylor
Joseph Taylor (17th-century actor)
Joseph Taylor was a 17th-century actor. As the successor of Richard Burbage with the King's Men, he was arguably the most important actor in the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras....
, John Lowin
John Lowin
John Lowin was an English actor born in the St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. While he is not recorded as a free citizen of this company, he did perform as a goldsmith, Leofstane, in a 1611 city pageant written by...
, John Underwood
John Underwood (actor)
John Underwood was an early 17th century actor, a member of the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare.-Career:Underwood began as a boy player with the Children of the Chapel, and was cast in that company's productions of Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels and The Poetaster...
, Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield was a seventeenth-century actor, noted for his longtime membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death.Nothing is known of Benfield's early life...
, Nicholas Tooley
Nicholas Tooley
Nicholas Tooley was a Renaissance actor in the King's Men, the acting company of William Shakespeare.Recent research has shown that Tooley was born in late 1582 or early 1583; his birth name was not Tooley but Wilkinson...
, William Ecclestone
William Ecclestone
William Ecclestone or Egglestone was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Nothing is known with certainty about Ecclestone's early life...
, Richard Sharpe
Richard Sharpe (actor)
Richard Sharpe was an actor with the King's Men, the leading theatre troupe of its time and the company of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage...
, and Thomas Holcombe
King's Men personnel
King's Men personnel were the people who worked with and for the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men from 1594 to 1642...
. (The folio provides the same cast list for two roughly contemporaneous plays in the canon, Fletcher's Women Pleased and Fletcher and Massinger's The Little French Lawyer.) The cast list indicates a date of first performance after Taylor joined the company in the Spring of 1619, and before Tooley's death in June 1623.
Authorship
Critics and scholars since the nineteenth century have recognized that the play is a Fletcher/Massinger collaboration. Cyrus HoyCyrus Hoy
Cyrus Hoy was a literary scholar of the English Renaissance stage who taught at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, and was the John B. Trevor Professor of English at the University of Rochester...
, in his wide-ranging survey of authorship problems in the Fletcher canon, arrives at a division of authorship that is essentially the same as those of earlier commentators like E. H. C. Oliphant:
- Fletcher — Act I; Act III, scenes 1-3; Act IV, 3-5; Act V, 5 (middle portion);
- Massinger — Act II; Act III, scenes 4-5; Act IV, 1-2; Act V, 1-4, and 5 (beginning and ending).
The play was revived in adapted forms after the theatres re-opened with the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
. Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...
's version, Love Makes a Man, dates to 1700
1700 in literature
The year 1700 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* May 5 - Within a few days of John Dryden's death , his last written work, The Secular Masque, is performed as part of Vanbrugh's version of The Pilgrim....
, while Charles Johnson's
Charles Johnson (writer)
Charles Johnson was an English playwright, tavern keeper, and enemy of Alexander Pope's. He was a dedicated Whig who allied himself with the Duke of Marlborough, Colley Cibber, and those who rose in opposition to Queen Anne's Tory ministry of 1710 - 1714.Johnson claimed to be trained in the law,...
The Country Lasses appeared in 1715
1715 in literature
The year 1715 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Nicholas Rowe becomes Poet Laureate of Great Britain.* Peter the Great takes lessons in maritime affairs from Hermann Boerhaave, before departing for Holland....
.
The play belongs to a sub-category of Fletcher works sometimes called "chastity plays" for their concern with that subject. This sexual emphasis disturbed many traditional critics, though The Custom of the Country has been cited as "one of the most lively and amusing" of Fletcher's chastity plays.
Synopsis
Count Clodio is an Italian governor who claims the traditional right of droit de seigneurDroit de seigneur
Droit du seigneur is an alleged legal right allowing the lord of a medieval estate to take the virginity of his serfs' maiden daughters. There is no historical evidence that such a right ever existed.-Terminology:...
; he is also the suitor of Zenocia. Against her father Charino's advice, Zenocia prefers Arnoldo, a young man travelling with his older brother Rutilio. Arnoldo and Zenocia marry, and resist Clodio's attempt to claim his "right" with Zenocia; they escape with Clodio in hot pursuit. Reaching the seacoast, the three young people are waylaid by Leopold, the captain of a Portuguese vessel. The two young men escape by swimming to shore, but Zenocia falls into Leopold's clutches.
Leopold takes Zenocia to Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, and places her in the service of Hippolita, with the understanding that Hippolyta will advance his suit to Zenocia. Hippolyta, however, has fallen in love with a young man just arrived in town...who is Arnoldo, chasing after his lost wife. When Arnoldo resists Hippolita, she has him arrested under a false accusation of theft; but she relents, and intervenes to save him from the death sentence he receives. But when Hippolita realizes that Arnoldo loves Zenocia, she tries to have the girl strangled. The murder attempt is interrupted by the arrival of Manuel the Lisbon governor, with Clodio in tow; Zenocia is released. The frustrated Hippolita has recourse to witchcraft
European witchcraft
European Witchcraft is witchcraft and magic that is practised primarily in the locality of Europe.-Antiquity:Instances of persecution of witchcraft are documented from Classical Antiquity, paralleling evidence from the Ancient Near East and the Old Testament.In Ancient Greece, for example, Theoris,...
: the witch Sulpitia causes Zenocia to sicken by melting a wax image of her. Arnoldo, however, sickens in sympathy with his wife, and Hippolita, still in love with him, is forced to relent. Clodio too gives up on his quest for Zenocia, and also renounces his commitment to droit de seigneur.
The related subplot concerns the adventures of Rutilio, who fights a duel with Manuel's arrogant young nephew Duarte and apparently kills him. Rutilio is unknowingly sheltered by his opponent's mother Guidomar, the arrested by the watch, then ransomed by Sulpitia for her sexual service. Rutilio is redeemd from this servitude by a recovered and repentant Duarte, and eventually marries Guidomar.
Reception and history
John DrydenJohn Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
referred to the play in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie
Essay of Dramatick Poesie
Essay of Dramatic Poesy by John Dryden was published in 1668. It was probably written during the plague year of 1666. Dryden takes up the subject that Philip Sidney had set forth in his Defence of Poesie and attempts to justify drama as a legitimate form of "poetry" comparable to the epic, as...
; he is concerned to defend Restoration plays
Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
from the charge of lewdness, and claims that there is more "bawdry" in this play than in all later plays combined.
The play was rarely staged even during the century after Fletcher's death, when his plays remained current on the stage. In 1998, it received a staged reading at the new Globe Theatre
Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
in London.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
entitled her 1913 novel The Custom of the Country
The Custom of the Country
The Custom of the Country is a 1913 novel by Edith Wharton. It tells the story of Undine Spragg, a Midwestern girl who attempts to ascend in New York City society.-Plot summary:...
after this play.