Medieval comedy is often the refuge for gratuitous violence where pain is inflicted without any consequences, where an audience can laugh at the discomfort or dysfunction of a person or an institution without the implications of suffering. Medieval folk humour developed outside the official sphere of high ideology and literature, and ‘in this unofficial existence medieval comedy was marked by exceptional radicalism, freedom, and ruthlessness’. Since laughter was often frowned upon in official and religious spheres, exceptional privilege of licence and lawlessness was bestowed outside these arenas: ‘in the marketplace, on feast days, in festive recreational literature. And medieval laughter knew how to use these privileges widely.’ However these privileges may have extended to ruthless displays of violence, there were boundaries to that violence and limits to the ultimate brutality of a joke in order for it to retain its humour. The representations of brutality in these texts are not mimetic; they are exaggerations of vigilante violence and brutality that satirize the excessive measures employed and question their validity.