Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn

Cupid "floats" above them with the aid of a ladder, fetching two stockings for Apollo, identifiable from the sun on his head, who points out with the aid of a bow their hanging place on a cloud beneath a dragon. Next to the actress playing Diana, two children dressed as devils help themselves to a mug of beer left on the altar like a sacrifice. A woman next to them (possibly their mother) is shocked by their behaviour but she has her hands full assisting the "ghost" to bleed a cat from its tail. As with many of Hogarth's cats, this one is reaping the rewards of life as an outsider. An old wives' tale of the time claimed that to recover from a bad fall you should suck the blood from the freshly amputated tail of a tom cat. Here the cat has a role forced upon it in the same way that actresses fill inappropriate roles.

Above the women in this corner, a face peers down through the opening in the barn roof. Here a low mortal looks down on the gods from heaven, rather than the other way round. He fills the role of Actaeon, who accidentally saw Diana naked and was changed into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds as punishment. Here though the viewing of Diana is intentional. In the right foreground, Juno practices her lines, while Night, identifiable by her star-spangled headdress, darns a hole in her stocking.

In front of Night and Juno is Hogarth's take on a vanitas, but here the symbols of death are replaced by comic figures: a monkey wearing a cloak urinates into a helmet; one kitten plays with an orb while another plays with a harp; bags and coffee pots litter the table. The monkey and kittens presumably fill the roles of attendants mentioned in the playbill; their play acting as a human serves to highlight further the difference between acting and reality.

To the left of the picture,