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In his ineffably moving sonnet 'On His Blindness', Milton does not talk of his own sightlessness rather, he turns an inner eye on 'this dark world and wide'. What makes these lines so moving is not just the intellectual sprezzatura (his Inferno is not geographical, like Dante, but metaphysical and impossible), but our knowledge that he was probably already blind when he dictated the line. 'No light, but rather darkness visible': in 10 syllables Milton conjures the paradox of Hell. Is this appropriation or reconciliation? 3. 'This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine' says Prospero to Caliban.

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But the profound Shakesperean darkness is in The Tempest, a play played indoors, like all the late plays, and like them, full of ambiguous reconciliation. Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom, can't keep darkness at bay: 'did the act of darkness with her', 'the prince of darkness is a gentleman', 'an angler on the lake of darkness'. The play where darkness is most frequently mentioned is one which would have been seen in full daylight: King Lear. The bed-trick in Measure for Measure or All's Well That Ends Well is predicated upon not being able to see whom you're shagging A Midsummer's Night Dream doesn't work if they're all in a suburban dining room. Night in Shakespeare is different from darkness вЂ“ night is where identities are confused, conflated and sometimes confiscated. So many scenes depend upon it вЂ“ from Henry V touring the troops incognito, to the Porter in Macbeth unwittingly realising his role in murkier deeds, to the 'darkness' of the Dark Lady.

There's a dissertation to be done on Shakespeare and darkness. Reading through all this, and especially, later, Job вЂ“ the book that mentions darkness most ('a land of darkness most, as darkness itself and of the shadow of death a land without order, and where light is as darkness', 'He discovereth deep things out of darkness' and 'Where is the way where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof?', and many more), there is the heart-squeezing opening of John's Gospel, 'And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.' 2. Moses is allowed to create 'a darkness which may be felt' over Egypt, but God still hides himself in 'the darkness, the cloud and the thick darkness' when he speaks to them in the Book of Deuteronomy. Even here, darkness is just absence, not moral horror. Genesis begins with darkness upon the face of the deep, until God encompasses this void to change it. But Ahura Mazda (whose name means Light Wisdom) was not opposed to Angra Mainyu on account of darkness вЂ“ the name of that entity means 'malign spirit' or 'destructive mentality'. It was probably through Persian Zoroastrianism that the equation of Light and God was first made. It is neither exhaustive, nor definitive, but at least shows, I hope, how marbled and ambiguous darkness is.

I've selected five versions of darkness from the capital 'C' canon. Darkness is such a pliant and redolent theme, encompassing terror, comfort, wisdom, folly, being lost, being estranged, being sneaky, being smart it is a representation of the seething, absent force of all that is selfish and wicked and cloaked (Sauron and Mordor in the work of Tolkien) or a profound and inexpressible and enigmatic presence (G K Chesteron's Sunday in The Man Who Was Thursday).