Many scenes featuring peasants are set in inns. This low-life tavern scene features a cavernous space with peasants making music, fighting, eating, drinking, dancing, and cavorting. A contemporary document indicates that the painting was based on a comic poem by Gerbrand Adriaensz. Bredero and that the commission was offered as an exchange for an interest payment on the painter's house. Such images, painted for the edification of the well-to-do, were meant to denounce the riotous carryings-on of the lower classes.

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