It is difficult to tell whether this entertainment is taking place in a private house or in a public Assembly Room. The 'Rout' was a popular form of evening party dating from the later years of the eighteenth century, in which a large crowd of people were asked to dancing and supper. The musicians can be seen at the back of the room. The crush was usually frightful and there are numerous descriptions of the difficulty of dancing in the squeeze or of securing any food at tables occupied several deep on every side. For such an occasion the furniture was removed and the carpet rolled up, as here; the paintings in this room, seemingly portraits, suggest a private house.

However, the man on the extreme left of the drawing seems to be controlling access to the rooms, and appears to hold a bunch of tickets in his hand. At the Assembly Rooms, which were established in towns of any substance at this date, highly exclusive evening parties were held by subscription, and were an important point of social contact for the neighbourhood families. Jane Austen's novels include accounts of these assemblies. The Rooms, many of which survive and have been carefully restored, were elegantly appointed in order to give the social events as close a resemblence as possible to private parties. The grotesque and unbecoming fashions worn by a number of the participants may be intended to suggest pretension, satirising the types who either gave or attended these entertainments