“There Is No Darkness But Ignorance”: How Vanessa Sees Alabama

“There is no darkness but ignorance.”

Feste, the clown, in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Act IV,

Scene 2

This quote appears in a scene in Twelfth Night. It is also carved into a statue of William Shakespeare in Leicester Square near the Tickets TKTS booth where playgoers can purchase half price tickets for that day’s performances. Created by the sculptor Giovanni Fontana, and based on an original piece by Peter Scheemakers, the figure has formed the centerpiece of Leicester Square Gardens in London since 1874.

The full quote is:

“Malvolio: I am not mad, Sir Topas: I say to you, this house is dark.
Feste: Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness
but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than
the Egyptians in their fog.
Malvolio: I say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though
ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say, there
was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you
are: make the trial of it in any constant question.”

In Twelfth Night, in Olivia's garden, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, and the servant Fabian play a joke on the steward Malvolio, who has insulted them. Not only that, Malvolio is a prude who loathes joy and frivolity, and despises those who frolic and play — which they all love to do. Maria writes a letter, supposedly from Olivia, declaring her love for Malvolio — and he foolishly believes it. On top of this trick, they throw him into a dark cell, and have Feste, the fool dressed as a priest come for a visit. Malvolio complains about the inky blackness and Feste says that the cell is not dark but Malvolio’s madness leads him to believe it is.

So, in this encounter, the quote actually means that in ignorance, we fail to fully sense the world around us and we get lost in darkness, never perceiving reality or truth. With a double entendre, as Shakespeare’s fools are wont to speak, Feste also hints that Malvolio is ignorant of the other’s conspiracy and figuratively speaking, he is kept in the dark.

Of course, we can go beyond the context in this play and conjecture that by having a character say these words, Shakespeare had an insatiable desire himself to know more and more about the world and the people who inhabit it. Perhaps he believed that truth comes from the light of knowledge as it moves us from the darkness of ignorance.

Four-hundred and twenty years after Twelfth Night’s first recorded performance in February of 1602, Roger and I visited Shakespeare’s adopted home of London in 2022 before going on an expedition to Scotland. Wandering near our hotel in Kensington on the way to supper in a nearby pub, we happened to look down and see numerous lovely sunken plants behind a garden flat. As we admired the flowers and small trees, the owner began to putter about 15 feet  below us, and we struck up a conversation with her.

Vanessa asked what we were doing in London, acknowledging our American accents and we told her all about the pilgrimage to Iona we were going to be taking. We talked for a good 20 minutes about all sorts of things: her neighbors, her blooms, the neighborhood, a lost cat, and many other fun topics. Toward the end of the conversation, she asked where in America we called home. “Alabama,” we told her. She leaned on her shovel a moment and said, “Alabama. Alabama? The home of the untraveled.”

Wow! What a blow, but what a way to instantly understand the overseas opinion of our beloved but rear-facing, foot-dragging state. We have a number of people who urge our state to advance, and thank goodness for them. In John Archibald and Kyle Whitmire, we have two journalist-prophets who continuously urge Alabama forward. In this context, I am using Richard Rohr’s definition of a prophet. Rohr is the Franciscan writer on spirituality who calls a prophet someone who is on the far edge of the inside.

These two prophets don’t renounce Alabama, nor are they blindly loyal to the state. They are not disgusted, disdainful outsiders throwing rocks at Alabama, nor are they dopey, self-satisfied insiders who dare defend our state as it seems to creep ever toward the self-inflicted dark bitterness Malvolio was thrown into. I am forever pulling for the success of these two writers to wake Alabama up. Vanessa did acknowledge and compliment the fact that Roger and I were roaming abroad.

But, metaphorically, our state remains the drowsy “home of the untraveled.” Think what travel does for the pilgrim. Travel gives us empathy for other nations and people with different skin colors and languages. Travel encourages us to celebrate ancient traditions and eat incredible foods unlike our own. Travel teaches us history, geography, literature, the arts! Through travel, we might even have a crash course in humility as we gain different perspectives on other people and lands, realizing we are not ourselves, nor is our state or nation, the center of the Universe. Travel can open us up and transform us.

But Alabama seems to enjoy the status quo. We seem to like the place where dark ignorance grows, where we are more puzzled than people in a fog.

I would be so happy if more and more of us could follow Mrs. Gibbs’ thought in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town: “Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.” But then, maybe the play Our Town is banned from our public libraries.