On Comedy, Football and (Once Again) the Impact of Theatre on Spectators’ Reactions

This chapter focuses on the emotional responses of the audience in Aristophanes’ Knights and argues that watching certain contemporary plays can help to elucidate the emotions that Athenian audiences might feel while watching a performance. In particular, James Graham’s Dear England (2023) is proposed as a good parallel for spectatorial reaction. Dear England is reminiscent of Old Attic comedy, combining sharp political mockery with emotional exploration of a significant contemporary phenomenon: football, both as a major national sport and as a political event. In addition, the notions of ‘generic expectations’ and ‘predictive processing’ are discussed as useful concepts for considering what spectators actually ‘expect’ when they come to the theatre to watch a tragedy, a comedy, or a play about their national game and national team.