Almost invariably, the participants in an adulterous relationship are married women and men other than their husbands, rather than husbands with mistresses. Seducers are never in short supply. Knights and clerics invariably succeed. The fabliaux frequently show an interest in language and its uses or misuses. Several texts offer amusing anecdotes that play on the distinction between figurative and literal language.
Revenge is the motivating force in some of the best fabliaux.
The authors of fabliaux show a keen interest in genitalia. They thus give us works in which genitals talk, multiply, detach themselves from their owners, exhibit prodigious dimensions, and are frequently personified and described in endlessly imaginative ways. At the other end of the thematic and tonal spectrum are texts of considerable subtlety and refinement, even though they are still intended for amusement and often have seduction as their subject. When her husband asks the reason for William's suffering, the woman, inventing an explanation in order to avoid complications, replies that William has asked for her husband's falcon. A commonplace of fabliau criticism concerns the anticlericalism and antifeminism of these compositions.