The noise of a skimmington ride is heard: Shakestone enters to expound. Discovering her husband to be impotent, Parnell has been so noisily irate that her scandalised neighbours are caricaturing them as ‘Don Skimmington’ and his shrewish wife (imagine pasteboard figures on horseback, accompanied by villagers beating on pans, etc.). Parnell enters, her sexual dissatisfaction loud and, to the mind of the gentlemen, immodest (she had prior experience of how virile Lawrence once was, but now she says she wants a divorce). The mocking skimmington parade enters, and a street brawl starts, as Parnell attacks the puppet husband, Lawrence the puppet wife. Parnell even thinks she has drawn blood (the reference is to scratching a witch, and in drawing blood, freeing yourself from the power of her charm).