For the analysis of natural vibrations of a rectangular stiffened plate with inner cutouts, an application of the Rayleigh-Ritz method is investigated. In construction of the trial function for the Rayleigh quotient, only the outer boundary conditions are satisfied with combination of Euler beam functions. As to the modeling of stiffened plates for the energy calculations, a lumping stiffener-effects method and the orthotropic plate analogy are considered for the purpose of comparison. Some numerical results obtained by the Rayleigh-Ritz method are compared with results by experiments and the finite element method. The following are major conclusions; (1) With the lumping stiffener-effects modeling the Rayleigh-Ritz method gives good results of both natural frequencies and mode shapes. The orthotropic plate analogy in cases of regularly stiffened plates is of restrictive use i.e. acceptable for a small cutout. (2) The natural frequency of a stiffened plate with inner cutouts between stiffeners is higher than that of without cutouts and increase as the hole area ratio increases as long as there are no discontinuous stiffeners due to the cutout.