Peeter Baltens, a painter in the circle of Pieter Bruegel, played an important role in the Antwerp artists’ guild. He was also a rederijker (rhetorician): a poet and an actor. A comic dramatic work is being performed on the makeshift stage in the middle of this kermis scene. The farce is about a man – hidden in a pedlar’s basket – who catches his wife cheating on him with a clergyman.