tries to declare Dr. Prentice insane, going so far as to attempt to put him in a straitjacket. By presenting these authority figures as madmen, Orton challenges their credibility, encouraging the audience to doubt their legitimacy.

Additionally, the psychiatrists in What the Butler Saw blatantly misuse their authority. Dr. Prentice uses his position as a doctor to pursue sexual advances with Geraldine. Dr. Rance quickly labels other characters as insane, basing his judgments more on his own thoughts than on their actual behavior. He even forces an injection on Geraldine, who is no more insane than he is. It is hard to imagine how he could ever be truly helpful to those suffering from mental illness.

Ultimately, Orton's examination of these themes serves as a critique of societal norms. He encourages the audience to rethink their perceptions of madness, their faith in psychiatry, and their respect for authority. While humorous, Orton's sharp observations address significant issues.

A significant portion of the action in What the Butler Saw revolves around sexual themes. The storyline is propelled by Dr. Prentice's attempt to seduce or assault Geraldine, followed by his efforts to hide his inappropriate behavior from his wife. Beyond infidelity, Orton's play delves into themes of rape, incest, and sexual identity. Although Orton presents these themes with humor, they carry an underlying sense of darkness.

Both Dr. Prentice and Mrs. Prentice are unfaithful. At the beginning of the play, Dr. Prentice is caught trying to have a sexual encounter with Geraldine, while Mrs. Prentice returns from a meeting with Nick. Details of her interaction with Nick are unclear. She claims to have "given herself" to him but later accuses him of attempted rape, which he does not deny. It is clear that Mrs. Prentice's infidelity is a known fact within the play. When Dr. Prentice calls her a nymphomaniac, it seems he accepts it as inevitable, adding a comedic element to the situation.

Similarly, Mrs. Prentice's suggestion to find young men for her husband implies that his infidelity is expected, contributing to the humor. However, in reality, infidelity is a serious issue, often leading to marital breakdowns and emotional pain. While audiences may laugh at Orton's humor, they remain aware of the serious undertones, which introduce a darker element to the play.

Rape and incest are also portrayed comically but contribute to the play's somber undertone. Dr. Prentice's attempt to seduce Geraldine could be interpreted as rape, as he ignores her consent, assuming she wouldn't willingly sleep with him. Additionally, Mrs. Prentice might have been assaulted by Nick, and she was raped by Dr. Prentice before they married. These acts are presented humorously in the play.

During Orton's time, joking about rape might have been more acceptable, but changing perspectives on women's rights have made such humor inappropriate. Even then, rape was never a minor issue, especially for victims. Incest, one of the most taboo subjects, is also considered unsuitable for comedy, if it ever was. Orton's play, however, explores double incest with Dr. Prentice's attempt to sleep with his daughter and Nick's possible assault of his mother, adding a layer of dark humor.

In What the Butler Saw, Orton also examines sexual identity, portraying it as fluid. Mrs. Prentice is part of a lesbian club, despite being married to Dr. Prentice, because the club views him as a woman. Thus, Dr. Prentice's sexual identity shifts based on others' perceptions. Later, Dr. Rance and Mrs. Prentice conclude that Dr. Prentice is gay, treating him accordingly, making his actual sexual orientation less important than how others perceive him.

The costume transformations in the play emphasize the fluidity of sexual identity. When Geraldine is dressed as Nick, she is seen as male, yet she chooses to identify as either male or female depending on the situation. At one point, she insists she must be a boy because she is attracted to girls. Nick is portrayed on stage in both male and female roles, but his sexual identity remains uncertain. He harasses women but also engages in sexual encounters with men for financial gain. As a result, the sexual identities of Dr. Prentice, Mrs. Prentice, Geraldine, and Nick all remain ambiguous. Orton suggests homosexual inclinations in each of these characters.

Orton, who was openly gay, did not consider homosexuality immoral and demanded that gay characters be depicted like any other characters, without exaggerated stereotypes, in various productions. However, during his era, homosexuality faced intense discrimination and was even illegal in England for a time, leading many to view it as "sick." Thus, for audiences back then, shifts in sexual identity might have seemed unsettling, a perception that is less prevalent today.

Critics have pointed out that Orton uses sexuality as a provocative element, aiming to shock and unsettle his audience. If this was his intention, he certainly succeeded with What the Butler Saw and his other works. Discomfort often leads to laughter, and Orton's frank depiction of sexual themes adds comedy to the play. In What the Butler Saw, the varied reactions to the open discussion of sex—ranging from shock and disgust to laughter—combine to illustrate the complexity of sexual issues.

In simplest terms, What the Butler Saw is a conventional comedy-farce about a husband and wife, both in search of extramarital adventures, whose attempts backfire and lead to complications which form the plot of the play. Even the husband’s attempted seduction of a girl who proves to be his own daughter is anticipated (tragically) in Luigi Pirandello’s Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (pr., pb. 1921; Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922). The plot is only the frame, however, for Joe Orton’s striking originality of witty and subversive dialogue, for which the only antecedent is the witty and subversive dialogue of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (pr. 1895), a play similarly framed on a perfectly conventional comic plot.

Satiric the play certainly is, but messages of social correction or uplift would be difficult to derive; the play is almost incidentally satiric as a by-product of its wit. The authorities of state and church and medicine are continuously available targets, whenever witty lines can be achieved, but the only prevailing satiric theme is perhaps the overturning of the conventional pieties and moralities of interpersonal relations. The play suggests, and to some extent achieves, a nonmoral utopia in which sexes and sexual preferences and perceptions of one’s sex and sexual preferences are altered as easily as clothing: Relationships may be readjusted for temporary pleasure, and the boundaries between sane and insane remarks and conduct dissipate in mirth. Sexual jokes and transpositions form the only recurring issue, and the only “serious” theme is that conventional sexual roles and conventional psychoanalytic interpretations of those roles are preposterously simplistic and restricting. That two of the characters, in what is at its crux a family play, are psychiatrists, obsessed with Freudian cliches that they wildly misapply, suggests that Orton also had an agenda against the ruling authorities of the mind.

The ending of the play—with gunfire, darkness, sirens, and the caging of the characters in the room—is a melodramatic parody of the need for a dramatic climax; when into this scene descends the sergeant as a Dionysian deus ex machina, the play reminds the viewer of its origins in Aristophanic Old Comedy, in which probability and morality were similarly subservient to zany discourse. The final embracing by the family members has not quite the safely conventional suggestion that one finds at the end of most comedies; given the proclivities of the characters for one another, a “happy ending” might include almost any pairing between the characters, since Prentice, his wife, and their son and daughter have all been sexually eager, if not predatory. Only the two outside authorities, Rance and Match, have remained neutral to the blandishments of sex.