Deceiving Don Quixote: how volume 1 differs from volume 2, and which is more humane

More teasing, or bullying if you will, of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, nearing the end of volume 2, as the Duke and Duchess arrange for an elaborate performance, something like a masque, in which a bunch of bearded men got up as "duennas" call upon DQ for help in avenging some kind of wrong or mortal insult - the lead duenna speaks very elaborately and formally, further deceiving DQ into thinking he is truly an knight errant being called upon to help an innocent person in distress. I guess there's humor here but it's also, as noted in yesterday's post, a form of cruelty: the Duke and Duchess are amused by SP's simplicity and DQ's insanity. DQ wants only to help people, and they are deceiving him - unlike his friends the barber and the priest who at their own expense and on their own time go to great lengths to find DQ (in volume 1) and then deceive - but only in order to get him home and to help him recover - these cruel people are deceiving DQ only to plunge him deeper into his madness, for their own pleasure. The contrast could not be more obvious - but what is the meaning? I think much of it is Cervantes's commentary on class relationships, then (and now). There also may be a sly way of making the readers themselves, us, feel uneasy: are we, too, complicit in getting pleasure through the sufferings and delusions of another?