Although the prince has been reformed, Derrick remains committed to a life of revelry and misdemeanor. In this scene, he plays a joke on his host John Cobbler pretending to be insulted by the quality of the dinner served by the cobbler’s wife. The joke picks up on the end of their last scene when John warned Derrick that he is poor and glad of a dish of roots (). Once again Derrick is the trickster clown and John, the dupe. Derrick charges onto the stage calling John’s wife a whore, and the hapless John follows behind trying to quiet him for the sake of his public reputation and find the cause of Derrick’s anger. Making this joke work for a contemporary audience was difficult on two levels. First of all due to the obscurity of the reference to roots, or root vegetables whose edible part is below ground (carrots, beets, radishes, parsnips, turnips, and other tubers), which were lower class fare for the table. It was unclear to many in our modern audience that the rustic clown Derrick is assuming airs and graces by suggesting it is insulting to his dignity to be offered a dish of roots. This class-based comedy is also enhanced in the original social context by the common vein of humor arising from cuckoldry, activated by the public insults Derrick directs at John’s wife.