According to Sigmund Freud, the pleasure of laughter makes us indulgent: we can see nothing wrong with the content of certain "tendentious" jokes, otherwise the pleasure would disappear. Freud states that there is even a cathartic process in sexual jokes: we enjoy aggressive tendencies we would be ashamed of in other circumstances. Some critics of the Restoration argue that the libertinism (often accompanied by physical violence or verbal abuse) of the comedies of the time is associated with a similar process. According to Fujimura, the audience’s identification with the witty rakes liberates them from the potential realization of their own tendencies out in the real world. Eric Rothstein and Frances Kavenik argue that Carolean Comedy (1660-1685) was characterized by a "substitutive design" and a "compromise formation" according to which desire was both gratified and repressed. These critics focus more on libertinism than on violence on the stage, but Freud’s hypotheses, which may be associated with classical theory of comedy, may be applied to the very frequent situation in Restoration comedy of some characters abusing others. Certainly, some things are allowed in comedy which would be condemned in the real world; it is part of the spirit of the genre, especially when it moves toward farce or the carnivalesque. Besides, who the abused is in a play clearly matters, and we may feel that some characters really deserve being mistreated. Still, this is not always the case.
    The comedies of Thomas Durfey, many of which border on farce, are a good example: there is much slaptick and much libertinism in many of them, but it is not easy to determine to what extent there is moral judgment in them. J. Douglas Canfield states that "critics have recognized the moralist in Durfey’s later comedies but have not known what to do with his earlier ones." Are Durfey’s early plays merely farcical and his later ones more serious? Are the earlier ones eulogistic of libertinism (Charles II was an admirer of Durfey’s plays and songs) whereas the later ones reveal a playwright aware of a new postrevolutionary and "reformed" order? An instance of violence that makes us wonder whether farce or satire predominates is that of Sir Lubberly’s striking his wife, the old Lady Beardly, in The Virtuous Wife (1679?). This beating of a wife would most probably not be seen as sheer slapstick were the role of Lady Beardly played by Mrs. Bracegirdle or any other actress. James Nokes was cast as the old widow to provoke mirth and soften the violent underside. And yet, although in the real world on the stage a man is being beaten by another, a conventional situation found in many of Durfey’s plays, especially in farcical scenes like those involving Beauford in act IV, the audience may feel that in the fictional realm no woman, however ugly and vain she may be, deserves such cruelty.