ABSTRACT
The premise of this chapter is that the darkness of night in Shakespeare’s plays is both a stage and a state of mind, a phenomenological experience and a psychic condition. Not only is darkness what helps lovers escape, what allows visions to arise, what brings both wonder and terror. It is also the signifier for that state of adventure and recognition upon which a return to the ordinary is predicated. To bring light implies that any form of self-discovery requires darkness, not only as its backdrop but also as a creative entity. The question thus also to be explored is what closures those plays that make particular use of darkness find. Is darkness ultimately dispelled or are elements of darkness – and one might think of the sober morning at the end of Romeo and Juliet – carried into the day? Or does everything, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, end in night?
