It is clear that reading prose texts aloud was not just a popular pastime in the Netherlands during the 17th century – it functioned also as a kind of topos in prose fiction itself. Characters in the novels often ‘vocalised’ (i.e. read aloud and sang) and the frame story was particularly suited to this. Consequently, the frame story was much favoured in this context, and it always had the same structure, with a group of people put ‘on stage’ to tell each other stories and to read and sing together. Usually this takes place at a specified location, such as the various Dutch towns in the Nederduytsche Helicon (1610), or at the unnamed polder near Amsterdam, in Cornelis Danckertsz's Nutte Tijdtquistingh der Amstelsche Jonckheyt (1640). In this novel some good-hearted friends spend their time ‘playing sweet games, asking each other profound questions, sharing riddles, playing, singing’ and telling each other stories that they had heard or read somewhere. Before that, however, they start their hours-long gathering by reading aloud a new book, which one of them had just translated from the French: ‘De Turksche Historie van de desperate Orcane en Erremonde’ (‘The Turkish history of the desperate Orcane and Erremonde’). The frame could therefore describe a location, and also engage us in a journey. In the latter case, the characters would read and sing while they are on the road, as happens in Jacob van Heemskerck's Batavische Arcadia (1637) and also in Hendrick Soeteboom's Zaanlants Arkadia (1658).4 A famous foreign example in this category is Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1400), a wonderful collection of tales that is presented as a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury.

In farce books and song collections of the period, this kind of collective entertainment is often depicted in the title illustrations, which show groups of people holding the books in question, possibly sharing jokes or singing together. In prose, the frame structure is also used for a similar purpose, although an illustration depicting a collective reading is rarely found in prose texts. Still, a frame narrative is not required for an oral performance within a novel.