text:
Federer, Thiem into Indian Wells final as Nadal hobbles out
Nadal confirmed he would skip upcoming Miami Masters
INDIAN WELLS: The 39th match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal failed to materialize on Saturday as the world No. 2 Spaniard hobbled out of Indian Wells to send Federer into a title clash with Dominic Thiem.
Nadal, whose longstanding right knee trouble flared up in his quarter-final victory over Karen Khachanov, couldn't take the court for the blockbuster semi-final with Swiss great Federer.
"I wanted to try my best to be competitive today," a dejected Nadal said. "I warmed up today in the morning, and I felt that my knee was not enough good to compete at the level that I need to compete, to play semi-finals match of this event."
Federer, seeded fourth as he pursues a record sixth title in the California desert, will battle 25-year-old Austrian Thiem, who is seeking his first title in one of the ATP's prestigious Masters 1000 events.
Thiem, ranked eighth in the world, was rock-solid in a 7-6 (7/3), 6-7 (3/7), 6-4 victory over 14th-ranked Canadian Milos Raonic.
Thiem, who advanced to the semis on a walkover when Gael Monfils withdrew with a Achilles tendon inflammation, was locked-in from the start, firing 10 winners without an unforced error in the opening set.
He couldn't convert his only break point against Raonic in the second, and Raonic managed to seize the tiebreaker aided by a favorable netcord bounce for a 5-3 lead. Thiem gained the first break of the match for a 3-2 lead in the third and after saving the only break point he faced all day as he served for the match wrapped it up with a sparkling backhand volley.
"It was an amazing day," said Thiem, who will be playing in his third Masters 1,000 final. "His serve is just unreal so even though I played amazing it was so close the first two sets."
The Austrian said it would "mean the world" to break through for a Masters crown, but noted it would be a tall order against 20-time Grand Slam winner Federer-who is coming off a remarkable 100th career title in Dubai last month.
"It's not going to be easy," said Thiem, who has split four prior meetings with Federer 2-2. Federer was looking forward to the match and the chance to break out of a tie with Novak Djokovic for most Indian Wells titles, but was sorry to miss a meeting with Nadal.
Their rivalry stretches back 15 years, and Federer couldn't help wondering how many more chances they might have. "We've had so many epic battles," Federer, 38, said. "I know that every one that we have now could be our last. So was this our chance at a last one-I hope not and I believe at the level he's playing and the level I'm still going there's definitely going to be more."
The injury was devastating news for Nadal, whose run to the Australian Open final in January marked a return to competition for the first time since similar knee trouble forced him out of his US Open semi-final against Juan Martin del Potro in September.
He had ankle surgery in November, and only returned to training in December. "For me it's not about only today. It's about what it means for me to have to pull out in a tournament that I love so much like this one, and in the semi-finals after playing well during the whole tournament," Nadal said. "You can imagine that I can't be happy."
Nadal confirmed he would also skip the upcoming Miami Masters and aim to recover and prepare for the claycourt season, targeting a return at Monte Carlo April 14-21. – AFP
Federer sweeps past Isner for 101st title
Thiem topples 'legend' Federer to win Indian Wells championship
Federer, Nadal, steam into Indian Wells quarter-finals
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah congratulates Federer, invites him to Kuwait
Federer, Kerber stunned as Nadal powers into Australian Open quarters
Battling Murray crashes out as Federer, Nadal fight on


What do mean by culture?
How is our identity formed? Immigration in the UK.
The impact and challenges of living in a multi-cultural/multi faith society. What is the relationship between people and the environment?
How and why do people exploit the earth's resources?
Looking at various case studies to look at all these issues. What is conflict?
Why does conflict occur? And what are the effects of conflict?
Case study – 1066. How do people gain power? How do they stay in control? How have people challenged power before? – Case study William the Conqueror, Magna Carta, Peasants Revolt and Thomas Becket.
How do people spend their leisure time? Why do people travel? Where do people travel and take part in leisure activities around the world? Using various case studies to answer these questions. What jobs are associated with the industry. What is inequality?
The Earth is always changing; changed by natural processes and by humans. The study of water, the action of rivers and flooding is evident of this.
The theme is Water, Water, Everywhere. The unit draws on local, national and international examples. E.g., River Irwell (local) Tewkesbury (National) Grand Canyon (International).
Why are Varanasi, Lourdes, Mecca and Amritsar important places?
What part does water play in these places of pilgrimage?
What did the European explorers discover? Was the British Empire a good thing? Why did so many Africans die during the Middle Passage? Did the Civil Rights Movement bring freedom and equality to Black America? Does slavery still exist today?
Made in China; Bought by China; Mobile China; Contrasting China; Sustainable China; One in a Billion.
Why is it holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews?
Where is an important place to you? What is crime?
What do you think about crime? Who is affected by crime? What attitudes do people hold for certain types of crime? Where do criminals operate? How do we map crime? Why is mapping crime useful? What can we do to make crime more difficult to take place? Do we know the real story about international crime?
A case study – who is he? How did religion affect him?
What is the difference between Catholics and Protestants? Why did Henry VIII change England's religion? How did the Tudor's change the religion? What was the effect on people's lives?
How did Oliver Cromwell change England? Was Oliver Cromwell a hero or a villain? Why did England go back to a monarchy?
What were his key teachings, parables and miracles? Do you believe in miracles? Why was Jesus crucified when he entered Jerusalem as a hero? What happened after Jesus had died?
An ecosystem is made up of living things and their non-living environment. We humans have spread through most of the Earth's ecosystems, and changed many of them dramatically. We are learning that ecosystems are fragile, and we must protect them. What was Victorian Britain like?
What was the industrial revolution? Why were children employed? What work did they do? What was housing like? Why was there an increase in crime?
United utilities speaker on 'water' Intervention for students who are underachieving by subject staff and HOD.
History and French trip Intervention for students who are underachieving by subject staff and HOD.


A threat of thunder in the air, with its humid feel and overcast mood. Will it sound or will it simply just tease? A splash of rain releases some tension. Our healing mountain view hidden by weather. Puddles on the deck, boots on small feet. Simplicity, splashing in shallow puddles. Luxury of returning to bed before noon next to a sleeping cub. Awoken, vivid dreams, voices and people, mixed up, fragmented. Five minutes sleep to feel like 5 hours, all it takes to renew. A trip to a pitch, those same mountains in view. To be a spectator. An ancient and skilful game hurled down by 2000 year old celtic tribes to today's girls and boys. Images of Ireland's agile young warrior boys in training, wooden sticks hurling small leather balls. A passion never lost through the centuries of time. Small red heads examine unripe blackberries, temptation hard to resist. Threat of sore tummies ignored. Hiding in ditches, muck in hair. Hurlers on their very own ditch cheering on their ranger warrior. A gathering of the ladybird's marks a beautiful and lucky summer to remember. A life lesson for a boy with a jar. Take care of our small creatures, let them fly home to their house on fire.


text:
Meet the AAG Journals Editors: Kent Mathewson and Robert Perham
Staff August 3, 2018 Meet the AAG Journals Editors: Kent Mathewson and Robert Perham2018-08-03T16:54:27-04:00 Recent News
Kent Mathewson is the editor-in-chief of the AAG Review of Books. Published quarterly, the AAG Review of Books is a special journal highlighting recent texts in geography and related disciplines. The journal features book reviews by geographers and other scholars at various points of their academic careers. These reviews are also available from a database…
'AAG Review of Books' Launches Database to Commemorate New Milestone
Staff September 9, 2016 'AAG Review of Books' Launches Database to Commemorate New Milestone2017-10-20T14:39:13-04:00 AAG Review of Books
Since launching in 2013, The AAG Review of Books has published more than 250 book reviews, marking a new milestone for the journal. To celebrate this landmark, and to enable easier exploration of the vast collection of reviews, the AAG has launched a new searchable database. Readers can now search the full list of all…
New AAG Position Opening: Editorial Associate
AAG Staff February 11, 2015 New AAG Position Opening: Editorial Associate2017-10-20T14:50:42-04:00 Jobs & Careers in Geography
The Association of American Geographers (AAG) has an immediate opening for the position of Editorial Associate, to be located at the AAG's central office in Washington, DC. In collaboration with the Managing Editor and the Production Editor, the Editorial Associate will contribute to the day-to-day operations of the AAG's four scholarly journals: Annals of the…

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Welcome to the world of Mini promotion in North America.
The NA market now has an active agent & builders for 8 Series Mini Designs.
All that is needed are Ministas with $s.
Add the Nacira 6.50 to this list.
- Shipping of the tooling has been arranged. It wasn't easy. The tooling is obviously oversized which makes it 1) expensive and 2) more complicated than shipping a boat itself in a box...The tooling is schedule to leave Europe on April 16th and should be delivered on May 31st in LA. If all goes well at the border, it will not take more than a week to clear U.S. Customs and the first Pogo 2 will be in production in June, for delivery in July.
- All (or we hope most of) production details have been thought out and we don't anticipate any bad news as we build the first boats.
- The Pogo 2 will still be available to the French market and Pogo Structures will remain the service provider to all Pogo 2 owners. Boats will be shipped to Europe with keel (not attached to the boat) and deck hardware. Stainless Steel hardware, standing, running rigging and spars will be supplied by Pogo Structures.
- We have received many inquiries which is great. It looks like the Mini Class is definitely up on the curve with more racers and sailors interested in the concept.
Our story will become more interesting as soon as we receive the tooling of course. As soon as production starts, we will have more information, photos and videos on our BLOG http://www.opensailingusa.com/About/Blog/. We will start racing as soon as our Pogo 2 is ready. The first boat built will be our demo/racing boat. The next two are boats for new owners. We hope that some of you will pull the trigger to join the Mini Class after seeing and probably trying the Pogo 2.
No news good news as they say in France!!!
Back to the P2...some news on our BLOG with photos of the inside of the boat (some of you asked for them) and also a couple of photos from yesterday of the tooling, packed up, ready to ship!
Still lots of sailors interested.
Thanks all and see you soon on the water!
Thanks for your news on the P2 developments.
The person you need to contact re the North American Association is Sam Ausmuss.
A date for the 2010 AGM, to be held in Newport, has been set and a new Board will be elected or appointed.
We urgently need a new Board to move the Association forward & it looks as though there may be an opportunity for participation in the meeting through Skype.
You can find some comments and discussion on the Association forum indicating that others share your interest & willingness to strengthen the class in North America.


text:
Q: Can we use VAST for HLS streaming? Is it possible to send m3u8 files in VAST tags We are implementing video player with the VAST pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll video advertisement support.
Is it possible to send m3u8 files in VAST tags? I gone through the specification of vast and vast tags examples there is no where I able to find about this info.

A: Techically vast does not prevent you from using any media formay you want. Your problem could be the video players trying to render that format.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
SERALINI VALIDATED BY NEW EFSA GUIDELINES ON LONG-TERM GMO EXPERIMENTS
GE and Your Health
SUMMARY: "The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued guidelines for two-year whole food feeding studies to assess the risk of long-term toxicity from GM foods."
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued guidelines for two-year whole food feeding studies to assess the risk of long-term toxicity from GM foods.
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3347.htm
This is a fascinating document which largely validates the methodology and choices of Prof, Gilles-Eric Seralini in his 2012 study on GM maize NK603 – methodology and choices that EFSA and countless other critics previously attacked him for.
Particular points to note:
1. EFSA admits that "no standardised protocol or guidelines exist for this type of study and [industry] applicants have to adapt protocols" – as Seralini did, too.
2. EFSA says the same strain of rat that was used in the 90-day study on the GM food should be used in the longer study – thus vindicating Seralini's use of the Sprague-Dawley rat, which Monsanto used in its 90-day study on the same maize.
3. EFSA says animals should be fed ad libitum, which Seralini did, but which critics complained made it impossible to measure individual food and water consumption.
4. EFSA admits that you do not necessarily need a narrow and fixed hypothesis and that such a study can be "exploratory", in spite of its previous claim that Seralini's experiment was flawed because it (according to EFSA) didn't have a clear hypothesis or objective.
5. EFSA recommends against using the extra control or "reference diet" groups commonly included by Monsanto in its 90-day studies and fed a variety of supposedly non-GM diets, on the grounds that the concurrent controls are the valid controls AND what is being tested is the difference between the GM variety and the non-GM comparator. Seralini was criticised by many for not including these spurious extra control groups and for thus having "inadequate controls".
6. EFSA cautions strongly AGAINST relying on historical control data and if it is used, restricts it to within 5 years of the current experiment and to the same testing facility. This is a much stricter requirement than industry ever applies; industry uses ancient data from a wide variety of sources.
EFSA says: "The use of historical control data should be considered with caution. The historical controls might not be useful because the incidences of neoplastic (or non-neoplastic) lesions would possibly be from control animals kept on different diets than the diet applied in whole food/feed study, and because the diet itself (high/low fat, type of fat, % of carbohydrate, type of carbohydrate, etc.) can influence the formation of neoplastic or non-neoplastic lesions. Where the diet formulation used in the experiment for the control groups cannot be demonstrated to be equivalent to that used for the generation of historical control data, the inclusion may be considered of an additional control group (as similar as possible to the historical controls), in addition to the concurrent control group(s)."
It's unfortunate that in rightly condemning the use of historical control data, however, EFSA allows in those extra control or "reference" groups that it rightly condemned in point (5) above.
7. EFSA recommends a minimum of 10 animals per sex per group for the chronic toxicity phase, the same number that Seralini used.
8. EFSA recommends housing animals in pairs, as Seralini did, so individual food consumption cannot be measured.
9. EFSA requires an a priori power analysis to ensure appropriate sample size, depending on the effect size that is being looked for. We've never noticed the GM industry doing one of these, resulting in experiments that are virtually guaranteed not to find anything. For Seralini's team's comment on this, see:
http://www.ijbs.com/v05p0706.htm
Overall, we're pleased to see EFSA taking on board our cautionary lessons on spurious "reference" control groups and historical control data (even if in the same document EFSA subsequently allows the use of both!), as well as validating the aspects of Seralini's experiment that he was most criticised for.
SOURCE: GMO Seralini
URL: http://gmoseralini.org/seralini-validated-by-new-efsa-guidelines-on-long...
What is genetic pollution?
Is genetic engineering precise?


text:
Tag: R.B. Heilman
Posted on September 27, 2019 October 10, 2019 by Vincent Hanley
Some Central Themes in Shakespeare's King Lear
The gods in King Lear
King Lear is set in England – an England before history, a country of swirling mists and violent tempests where ancient gods hold sway. It has been sometimes described as a Christian play with a pagan setting. For us Irish, even the name Lear/Lir conjures up legendary tales from Irish mythology. The Children of Lir, for instance, is a tale from the early Christian period that mixes magical elements such as druidic wands and spells with a Christian message of faith bringing freedom from suffering. This is very similar to the underlying theme in Shakespeare's King Lear.
We also need to be aware of the historical events taking place in England around 1605 when this play was written. Queen Elizabeth I had died in 1603 without a direct heir to the throne. She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland who later became James I of England, Scotland and Ireland – the first early version of the United Kingdom. Shakespeare's company was known as The King's Men and many of the plays were produced with a Royal Command Performance in mind. It is interesting that Macbeth – set in Scotland – was first performed in 1606 for the same monarch.
Even a casual reader of King Lear is bound to notice the frequency with which the gods are invoked or discussed by many of the characters in the play. More striking perhaps, is the great variety of distinct points of view on the gods and their dealings with men expressed from beginning to end of the play. Some of these are merely passing references, as, for example, Albany's amazed reaction to Lear's behaviour towards Goneril: 'Now gods that we adore, whereof comes this?'. Others are obviously ironic or insincere, as when Edmund, in conversation with Gloucester, claims that he tried to dissuade Edgar from his murderous intent by telling him that 'the revenging gods / Against parricides did all their thunders bend'; or when Regan invokes 'the blest gods' in response to Lear's curses. But such casual references are rare enough: elsewhere, whenever the gods are mentioned, the tone is almost invariably serious, betraying the concern of the speakers with the nature and attributes of the ultimate Power, and their awareness of the problems of affirming cosmic justice in the face of the evil and suffering so rife in their universe.
Many commentators have remarked on the number of conflicting theories on the nature and disposition of the gods that are advanced by the different characters, sometimes indeed, by the same character, during the course of the play. Almost every major point of view is expressed. Gloucester in his despair sees men as the victims of a capricious and malevolent divinity: 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods'. At other times, particularly after suffering has awakened his religious sense, he addresses heartfelt prayers to the 'ever-gentle gods' and speaks feelingly of 'the bounty and the benison of heaven'. Edgar pictures the gods as dispensers of a merely retributive justice:
The gods are just and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
But his other, and more characteristic, religious utterances reveal a deep faith in supernatural goodness, and his view of the gods is best seen in his encouraging words to Gloucester after he has saved him from suicide:
Therefore, thou happy father,
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee.
The speeches of the other characters also help to enlarge and diversify the range of references about the gods. When Kent, who normally expresses faith in the just dealings of the heavenly powers, is momentarily overwhelmed by the apparent triumph of wickedness and injustice in the play and dismayed by the unnatural dealings of Lear's daughters, he falls back on an astrological determinism, 'It is the stars', he cries, 'the stars above us govern our conditions'. Edmund's deity is a nature-goddess while Lear appeals to primitive magic when he disinherits Cordelia 'by the sacred radiance of the sun / The mysteries of Hecate and the night', and he calls on Nature, his 'dear goddess' to curse Goneril, as if he believes that the heavens are at the service of man's evil whims. In his great speech on the heath (III, iv, 28ff), he implies that the wretched condition of the poor is an indictment of divine justice. By exposing himself to feel what naked wretches feel, and by sharing his superfluous goods among them, he hopes to 'show the heavens more just'.
For many students of the play, Gloucester's cry of despair, 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods / They kill us for their sport.', strikes the keynote of the play and sums up its spirit. There is indeed much in the play to justify this point of view. Time after time Shakespeare seems to underline the futility of looking to the heavenly powers for help, pity or the alleviation of suffering. He throws into the sharpest possible relief the bitter and ironic contrast between the seemingly justifiable aspirations of men, so often nourished by belief in divine goodness, and the apparent indifference and blindness of the gods to even their most urgent and insistent demands. Some of the juxtapositions contrived by Shakespeare seem to make a mockery of prayer and faith in providential justice. Lear invokes the heavens against the ingratitude of his daughters and begs them to make his cause their cause, to come down and take his part, but the heavens are silent and Regan adds to his misery by demanding that he dismiss half his train. His next prayer, 'You see me here you gods, a poor old man' is answered by the sound of the approaching storm, and soon after, the elements let fall their 'horrible pleasure' and join with his two evil daughters in punishing 'a poor, infirm, weak and despised old man'.
Edgar on the heath thinks that 'the worst returns to laughter': he is immediately confronted with the bleeding face of his blinded father. Just before the battle he urges Gloucester to pray that the right may thrive, and assures him 'If ever I return to you again I'll bring you comfort'. He returns only to lead his father away; his prayers have not been answered: 'King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en'. The most dreadful example is reserved for the last scene. Edmund has repented. He reveals his plan to have Cordelia murdered in prison, and Edgar hastens to save her life. Albany's prayer, 'the gods defend her' is at once followed by the stark stage-direction: Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms. By means of deliberate effects like these, the play seems to suggest that there is no basis for faith in heavenly justice or benevolence, that the Powers who control the universe are either hostile or indifferent to the good of man.
The idea of universal justice is most sharply challenged by the ending of this play. The wasteful deaths of Lear and Cordelia following their long exposure to suffering and torture inevitably make us wonder what conception of the universe caused Shakespeare to impose so 'cheerless, dark and deadly' an ending on a play which, in the Fourth Act, seemed to be heading to a reasonably happy ending True enough, Lear has sinned, but he is, in his own words, 'more sinned against than sinning', and the punishment he is made to undergo seems absurdly disproportionate to his original fault. It is not enough that he should humbly repent and willingly renounce the name and the trappings of a king for life in prison with Cordelia, that his pride should be broken and he is driven to madness but also during his last moments on earth he must endure the overwhelming sorrow of Cordelia's death. This grim ending has horrified many critics. Samuel Johnson rebuked Shakespeare for having 'suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to our natural ideas of justice, and to the hope of the reader'. There are those who argue that the ending in King Lear destroys any basis for faith in a god or gods, and quenches the notion that in our universe the good thrive and the wicked will be eventually punished.
This pessimistic view of the Lear universe is not universally held. There are those who argue, that, far from being a bitter indictment of cosmic justice and of providence, the play offers a profoundly Christian comment on the dealings of providence with men – that it is, in fact, a Christian play about a pagan world. These critics point to the fact that the play's attitude toward human suffering is, in fact, a Christian one. It has always been part of Christian teaching that man is perfected through suffering and the image of the Cross is central to this idea. Christians believe that any painful experience is good when it leads the sufferer, however unwillingly at first, along the path of righteousness and humility; that, in fact, suffering leads to redemption and enlightenment as is the case with Lear and Gloucester in the play.
The failure of 'the gods' to answer many of the prayers addressed to them throughout the course of the action has been interpreted by some critics as evidence that Shakespeare pictured the Lear universe as one in which the gods are indifferent to man's needs. Here, however, it is possible to find the values of the play are very compatible with those of traditional Christianity. With regard to prayer, it seems to make the point, one which very few Christian scholars would disagree with, that prayers are sometimes answered as the suppliant wishes, but that it is often otherwise, that the answer can take a totally unexpected form, or that no direct answer may be forthcoming. At the end of the blinding scene (III, vii) the Third Servant prays for Gloucester: 'Now Heaven help him'. His prayer is answered. Almost at once we see him reunited with Edgar, who saves him from despair and suicide and restores a measure of happiness to his tortured mind. On the other hand, when Lear prays that the vengeance of heaven may fall upon the head of Goneril, his demand recoils upon himself, and he becomes the victim of the elements during the storm. And there is no answer to Albany's prayer that Cordelia's life may be spared.
Edgar's is perhaps the best expression of the general attitude of the play towards the gods. As R.B. Heilman points out, he consistently shows his faith in human justice, but he 'does not presumptuously expect divinity to be a magical servant'. With regard to Lear's pleadings, the same critic argues that in the scheme of things as Shakespeare has here conceived it, he can expect justice, but he cannot dictate terms. Samuel Johnson, dissatisfied as he was with Shakespeare's decision to allow Cordelia to die in spite of the justice of her cause, nevertheless believed that the play convincingly exposed the self-destructive and abnormal nature of evil.
What the play seems to be saying to us concerning cosmic justice is not that 'the gods' wait for man to fall into the most trivial error in order to punish him, but that once man has wilfully embraced a wrong course of action, he is liable to set in motion a long train of disasters over which he has little control. There is also the notion that it is in the nature of evil to spread its influence far and with fearful rapidity, visiting both good and bad with misery and ruin, and that once the evil has been let loose man has no control over the consequences. Furthermore, the sufferers in the Lear universe cannot expect the gods to grant them or their fellows immunity from further suffering, as soon as they have repented, and it is part of the order of things in that universe that individual evil can never remain individual. The main point to be made about the idea of cosmic justice as seen in King Lear is that it is quite distinct from the poetic justice that so many critics seem to think that Shakespeare should have preserved. Poetic justice ensures that rewards and punishments are carefully distributed and bear as exact a relationship as possible to the nature of the deed. King Lear makes no attempt to establish such a relationship. It suggests, instead, that the notion of a purely retributive justice is one of mankind's illusions, and that although evil may be ultimately self-destroying, being good and virtuous provide us with few guarantees or protection against evil in the world.
Nature and its Meaning in King Lear
Shakespeare often focuses on major philosophical issues in his tragedies. For example, the famous critic and scholar, Wilson Knight, declares that 'the theme of Hamlet is death'. However, no Shakespearean play is so consistently devoted to a single central idea as King Lear is to the exploration of the meaning of the concept of 'Nature'. The play explores the idea of human nature, the natural world, what is natural and unnatural, and the many references to monsters and monstrous deeds, and so on, are numerous and occur throughout the play.
The events of the play and the behaviour of most of the character's underline Shakespeare's preoccupation with the idea. Lear disowns his one loyal and loving daughter in favour of two who will turn savagely on him. Gloucester, with that deep irony so characteristic of almost every major statement of its kind in the play, calls the utterly treacherous Edmund his 'loyal and natural boy', and disowns his totally devoted son Edgar. Each parent severs the bond of nature with animal ferocity, then, with grim irony, invokes nature as a reason for doing so. Lear's argument: Cordelia is a wretch whom nature is ashamed 'Almost to acknowledge hers'; Gloucester's: Edgar is 'an unnatural, detested, brutish villain: Worse than brutish'.
Lear and Gloucester, in Shakespeare's scheme of things, commit mortal sins against nature, and the rest of the play is mainly concerned with the awful revenge that nature will take on the two offenders, who act from brute instinct and in blindness. But Lear and Gloucester, however we may weigh their moral guilt, will each pay a price that bears little proportion to the admitted evil of their parallel actions.
Each will be largely cut off from the kindness, generosity and protection which human beings naturally afford each other. They will be forced to wander in a storm, one of the great Shakespearean symbols of disorder. They will learn the lessons of their folly through pain and suffering. Gloucester, paradoxically, must be blinded in order to see; Lear, paradoxically, must be driven to madness to achieve an understanding of himself and his acts.
The following are some examples of the many and varied aspects of the term 'Nature' as seen in the play:
Allow not nature more than nature needs
Man's life is cheap as beasts. (II, iv, 265)
Here nature means the primitive condition of mankind before civilisation.
Thou has one daughter
Who redeems nature from the general curse
Which twain have brought her to (IV, vi, 210)
Here we have the idea of an originally innocent nature before the Fall of Adam and Eve which requires a redemption.
That nature, which contemns in the origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself (IV, ii, 32)
Nature here is used to define the bond between child and parent. Goneril's unnatural treatment of her father involves the breaking of this bond. Albany warns Goneril that in so doing she will, like a branch severed from a tree, 'wither and come to deadly use'.
The characters in the play embody quite different conceptions of the meaning of nature. Cordelia represents an ideal: human kindness, the sense of a close kinship between human beings. Her sisters and Edmund see Nature as red in tooth and claw, and all men, irrespective of family ties, at war with others for personal advantage.
The Death of Lear
What is Lear's state of mind at the moment of his death? The answer we give depends on whether we believe Shakespeare meant the play to close on a bleak and cheerless note or whether (if Lear is seen to die happy if deluded) that he intended the play to end on a more hopeful note. The crucial lines are these:
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips.
Look there, look there. (V, iii, 312-3)
A. C. Bradley, the great Shakespearean scholar, suggests that Lear dies of joy, believing Cordelia to be still alive. Bradley pointed out that when Lear was still in doubt as to whether she was alive or dead he declared:
She lives! If it be so
Its is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.
If, in other words, she was still alive, this would counterbalance for him all the miseries he had endured up to this. Bradley distinguished between what the reader must feel as he watches Lear's pathetic deception and what the deluded Lear himself is experiencing:
To us, perhaps, the knowledge that he is deceived may have a culmination of pain, but if it brings only that, I believe we are false to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actor is false to the text who does not attempt to express in Lear's last accents and gestures and look, an unbearable joy (Shakespearean Tragedy).
This analysis has often been criticised as being too sentimental, but it has two fairly strong supports. One is the fact that in Shakespeare's source for the play, Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Lear's heart is described as being 'stretched so far beyond his limits with this excess of comfort'. The other is that we are almost certainly intended to see Gloucester's last moments as providing a parallel to Lear's, all their other major experiences being parallel. And here is how Gloucester dies;
His flawed heart
Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly (V, iii, 196).
In recent times, strong voices have been raised against the view that joy is the keynote of Lear's departure from this life. One point that should be borne in mind is that Lear's illusion that Cordelia still lives recurs three of four times in the last scene:
She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass.
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why then, she lives….
Here there is a heart-breaking tension in Lear between an absolute knowledge that Cordelia is dead, and an absolute inability to accept it. When his test with the looking-glass fails, he snatches a feather and tries a second test:
This feather stirs; she lives! If it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt…
This effort, like the last one, fails. Then again he tries to prove that she is alive by putting his ear to her lips in the hope that she might be speaking:
Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha,
What is't thou sayest? Her voice was ever soft.
Gentle, and low – an excellent thing in woman …
He dies vainly seeking (or thinking he finds) life in her lips ('Look there, look there'). What comfort can be extracted from the manner of his death? It might well be argued in response to Bradley that, given the cycle of despair, insanity and the illusion of hope, it hardly matters very much at what point of it Lear expires. One bleaker version is that of J. Stampfer, who argues that,
Gloucester died between extremes of joy and grief, at the knowledge that his son was miraculously preserved. Lear between extremes of illusion and truth, ecstasy and the blackest despair, at the knowledge that his daughter was needlessly butchered. Gloucester's heart burst smilingly at his reunion with Edgar; Lear's, we are driven to conclude, burst in the purest agony at his eternal separation from Cordelia (Shakespeare Survey, 1960, p.4).
Whatever the relative merits of the views expressed by Bradley and Stampfer, it is perhaps going too far to say that at the moment of Lear's death, joy is in equal balance with grief. What is safe to say is that Lear's heart breaks. The words of Kent make this clear ('Break heart, I prithee break'). It is also clear that we are meant to see his death as the culmination of an ordeal of torment renewed beyond reasonable endurance. Again Kent is our authority:
Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer.
King Lear: The Spirit of the Play
When one tries to describe one's overall impression of King Lear, its spirit, its overall mood, one can easily fall into the trap of imposing a pattern based on one's own preferences and attitudes. Many critics have seen, and described, King Lear as the embodiment of utter despair, chaos and cynicism. Others see it as Shakespeare's endorsement of love as the supreme and absolute human value. Both these extreme views fail to do justice to the range of issues so deeply touched on by Shakespeare in this tragedy.
The spirit of the play cannot be wholly pessimistic. At play's end, Lear has been reconciled to Cordelia and Gloucester to Edgar. Evil, as represented by the wicked quartet, Edmund, Cornwall, Goneril and Regan, has prospered for a while, taken possession of the Lear universe, caused men to descend to sheer bestiality, but has, by the close, destroyed itself. But is it too much to say that good has enjoyed a corresponding triumph? The 'good' characters, Lear, Cordelia, Edgar, Gloucester, Kent, must suffer, and even when their sufferings seem no longer supportable suffer again until the two chief characters die in harrowing circumstances.
Where, then, do we look for an 'optimistic' note in King Lear? It is easy, after all, to define the pessimistic ones: the forces of suffering and evil have possessed the play so long, and have so steadily enjoyed their various triumphs, that it may seem false to the overall tone of the play to underline the less despairing indications that offer themselves, if even tentatively, and almost apologetically. It may be too much to claim that Lear's reunion with Cordelia is the final seal on the salvation he has begun to achieve through suffering and deprivation. His real salvation is, perhaps, a more prosaic one: release at last from the torture of his life. The major theme of the play is what men must endure at the hands of those forces, inner and outer, which govern the courses of their lives. The play shows these forces as capable of almost continuous cruelty and torment. But it also sounds another note. The entire course of events in King Lear suggests that the forces of life perform another function. John Holloway, in his excellent study, puts the matter as follows:
To follow the master, to sustain the state, top bless one's child, to succour the aged and one's parents – the idea of being brought back to rectitude is what the play ends with. These are the things which it falls to living men to do; and if the play advances appositive, I think it is that when men turn away from how they should live there are forces in life which constrain them to return. If anything rules creation, it is (though only, as it were, by a hairsbreadth) simply rule itself. What order restores, is order. Men tangle their lives; life, at a price, is self-untangling at last (The Story of the Night).
Faced with the overwhelming depravity of the four chief villains, and the relative success of their schemes, it is easy to lose sight of the depth of human goodness and decency in King Lear. Kent and the Fool remain loyal to Lear to the end; Albany grows in moral stature as the plot develops; Edgar at times reaches heights of selfless perfection. Lear learns to recognise goodness and love for what they are, and his gratitude at this revelation is one of the more memorable things in the play. It is true that the lessons learned by Lear and Gloucester have involved a huge amount of suffering, and a terrible waste, a cosmic upheaval. But this in itself may be seen as offering grounds for optimism about man's place in the overall scheme of things. That the forces of life and nature should so disarrange themselves to teach two old men how to live is powerful testimony to the fundamental worth of human beings. Lear recognises this. Even the Supreme Powers, he feels, witness the events in which he is the central figure with awe and reverence:
Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense …
As I pointed out earlier, King Lear is set in England – an England before history, a country of swirling mists and violent tempests where ancient gods hold sway. This new cinematic adaptation of the play places it at some unknown time in the future – although recent political events in Westminster suggest that the United Kingdom may not be united for much longer! Ironically, this was one of the major reasons why Shakespeare gave us the great tragedies – he was saying to his audience: 'This is what happens when you mess with order – do not go there!'. Four hundred years later ……. the Bard is still relevant! Study well!
Bradley, A.C., Shakespearean Tragedy. New York: Meridian Books, 1955.
Granville Barker, Harley. Prefaces to Shakespeare, Vol 2. King Lear, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors (P) Ltd, 2006.
Heilman, R.B., This Great Stage: Structure in King Lear. Louisiana State University. 1948.
Holloway, John. The Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies. Routledge: London and New York. 1961 (Reprinted 2005).
Murray, Patrick. King Lear in Inscapes published by The Educational Company of Ireland. 1980
Schucking, Levin L., Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays: A Guide to the Better Understanding of the Dramatist. First published by George G. Harrap in July 1922.
Spurgeon, Caroline F. E., Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us, Cambridge Univesity Press, 1935.
Stampfer, J., The Catharsis of King Lear' in Shakespeare Survey 13, Cambridge, 1960
You might also like to read my 'Single Text Study Notes on King Lear' here.
Also, you might like to have a look at 'Image Patterns in King Lear' here.
Single Text Study Notes on 'King Lear'
Characters and Themes in 'King Lear'
These notes are an effort to give you some extra food for thought in your preparation for your Single Text question in June. The focus of your study should be on character, theme and image patterns. As far as Shakespeare was concerned the most important character in the play is Lear himself. We must keep this in mind when making our preparations. You will, in effect, have to talk about Lear and his relationships with all the other characters in the play. That is to say, you cannot discuss the character of Cordelia, or Gloucester, or Kent or the Fool without discussing their relationship to Lear.
You will also have to have some understanding of what is meant when we talk of Shakespearean Tragedy. You might like to read my short explanation of the term here.
Most of Shakespeare's tragedies are set abroad – Hamlet in Denmark, Othello in Venice and Cyprus, Macbeth in Scotland, Coriolanus in Rome, etc. Some critics say that the reason for this ploy was because he was often dealing with very serious matters such as murder, even the murder of kings and queens. He didn't want to be seen to be inciting people to rise up against his main benefactor, Queen Elizabeth or King James I. However, King Lear is set in England – an England of swirling mists and violent tempests, and it has been sometimes described as a Christian play with a pagan setting.
Interestingly, the underlying theme in King Lear, like the ongoing, excruciating Brexit saga, is of a United Kingdom being divided up to satisfy the egotistical whim of an ageing monarch. Fintan O'Toole, writing in an Irish Times opinion piece on Saturday 7th September, 2019 compares the Brexit goings-on in Westminster with the tragedy of King Lear. He says that recently 'a little bit of King Lear was playing out in the House of Commons' and that some of the scenes being acted out and relayed to us from Westminster and its environs even resembled some of the madness scenes in Lear:
The play, after all, is about the collapse of political authority in Britain, caused by nothing more than a caprice (a whim). It shows the potentially terrible consequences of political self-indulgence.
So, there you have positive proof if it was needed, that this Single Text you are studying this year is as relevant now as it was in 1605!
http://www.slideshare.net
The Main Characters in King Lear
The best point about Shakespeare's extraordinary achievement in presenting Lear is that made by Granville-Barker in his fine preface to the play:
For this massive fortress of pride which calls itself Lear, for any old man indeed of eighty or upwards, there could be no dramatic course but declension (to go downhill, to decline, to deteriorate). Who would ever think of developing, or expanding, a character from such overwhelming beginnings? Yet this is what Shakespeare does (in King Lear).
Lear indeed begins as an almost superhuman figure, marking out the map with the ponderous gestures of some god, and making his pronouncements with godlike authority and power:
Come not between the dragon and his wrath …
The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft …
Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm …
The most obvious feature of Lear's character, and the dominant one from the beginning is his arrogance, which everybody agrees, has been nourished by a long career of absolute power. (You might, if you find yourself with a minute to spare, tune in to Sky News and their minute-by-minute coverage of Brexit at Westminster and see if you can identify any modern-day proponents of this self-same arrogance!). Like Boris, the slightest opposition makes Lear fly into a towering rage. Those who question his pettiest whim, or dispute his judgments, are exposed to incredible retaliation. It is not enough for Lear to banish Kent: he also threatens him with capital punishment. Not only does he withdraw his favour from Cordelia: he treats her as if he has never known her: she is now 'new adopted to our hate'. These traits are still evident after he has abdicated and when he abandons himself to the 'charity' of Goneril and Regan. Indeed, if anything, his unpredictability and tempers worsen. He is remarkable at this stage for his impatience, his lack of self-control, his arrogance and mood swings. Even faithful followers like the Fool and Kent are treated very poorly; he threatens the Fool and makes little of Kent's loyalty and faithfulness. Those who provoke his anger fare even worse. He strikes Goneril's gentleman and insults Oswald. His curses on Goneril are fearsome. After Regan has disappointed him, he is seized by a terrible frenzy of passion which finds its outlet in a kind of madness.
Yet, even though we must always bear in mind that Lear is our tragic hero, no account that fails to point out these repellent aspects of his character can do justice to the portrait that Shakespeare wants to put before us. Some commentators are content to see him almost exclusively as a noble, suffering old man cruelly treated by his daughters. The other side of Lear is at least half the truth. Shakespeare goes to considerable rounds to underline his brutality, bitterness, fierceness, egotism, self-pity and fickleness. There is also the fact that he often tends to desire vengeance on all those (including his daughters) who injure or annoy him. It is interesting to notice that, early in the play, Shakespeare allows Goneril and Regan to comment on Lear's hotheadedness, on the fact that 'the best and soundest of his time hath been but rash'. They also feel that age has further weakened his already poor judgement and that his angry nature can break out in 'inconstant starts'. This is the one instance (and the only one) where we see things from their point of view.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that the entire tendency of the play is to cause the reader or spectator to discount Lear's failings and to regard him with compassion, sympathy and understanding. One major factor in Shakespeare's presentation of Lear is that all the characters we admire look on his situation from his point of view, and this is clearly what Shakespeare wants us to do also. He is, after all, the tragic hero and Shakespeare wants us to view Lear very much as a man 'more sinned against than sinning'. In a way, Lear's faults and failings are not the things we are invited to concentrate on. Shakespeare is concerned less with the personal weaknesses and shortcomings of his main character than with the monstrous insult offered by Goneril and Regan and their allies to some of the most sacred values of human beings: fatherhood, old age and kingship. The German critic Levin Schucking makes this essential point about this aspect of Shakespeare's presentation of Lear as tragic hero:
Lear … appears like an old, gnarled, stubborn oak tree, vigorously resisting the tempest, unyielding, majestic, deep-rooted, upheld only by its own strength, and towering above all its fellows. His weakness may almost be said to be the necessary concomitants of his strong qualities. His vindictiveness appears to be the result of his strength; his savage maledictions seem due to his fiery temperament. He is meant to be seen as a sublime and truly noble figure.
Many critics and scholars have found the real heart of the play, its essential 'meaning', in Lear's movement from pride, egotism and spiritual blindness to understanding, insight and love. This is often seen as a process of purification, by means of which, through suffering, Lear is led out of his severely limited vision into a proper recognition of the true values of life. Through the course of his misery, Lear achieves a degree of spiritual apprehension and insight which he never achieved in the years of his prosperity. At the outset, we see him as a proud and angry old man for whom love is merely an instrument of self-glorification. After he has felt humiliation and endured the fury of the storm he becomes increasingly aware of his own faults and of the needs and sufferings of others. In the great transitional scene on the heath, he shows kindness towards the Fool ('Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart that's sorry for thee'), and he urges Kent and the Fool to go before him into the hovel. Before sleeping he will pray, and in his prayer, he thinks of the poor naked wretches of whose misery he has never before been sufficiently aware: 'O, I have taken too little care of this'.
In Lear, religious feeling grows out of suffering and disappointment with worldly hopes; before he gains his soul, he must first lose the world. His final two speeches before he goes to prison are deeply religious. He renounces all power and earthly prosperity; he is contrite of heart; with Cordelia he will pray and meditate on heavenly things; he talks of blessing, forgiveness and sacrifices. His long and painful trial, far from giving one cause for doubting divine benevolence, may be interpreted in quite the opposite sense. A.C Bradley realised this, and in a celebrated passage, he argued that Lear owes his own spiritual awareness,
to those sufferings which make us doubt whether life was not simply evil, and men like the flies which wanton boys torture for their sport. Should we not be at least as near the truth if we called this play, The Redemption of King Lear, and declared that the business of the gods with him was neither to torment him, nor to teach him a noble anger, but to lead him to attain through apparently hopeless failure the very end and aim of life.
The main stages of Lear's spiritual development can be charted as follows:
His efforts to practice self-control and patience
His repentance for his treatment of Cordelia
His speech on 'true need'
His pity for the 'poor naked wretches'
His recognition of the falseness of flattery and of the brutal nature of authority
His consideration for the Fool ('In boy, go first')
His 'I'll pray, and then I'll sleep' in the hovel, in contrast to his earlier vehement cursing and crying for vengeance
His discovery of love and its true meaning
His new notion of happiness ('Come let's away to prison') with Cordelia
His 'conversion' is not an altogether simple, straightforward process. Against the idea that he is converted during the course of the play from a proud, fierce egotist into a patient, suffering Christian martyr, one has to bear in mind his outbursts of anger, hatred and vindictiveness to the very end:
A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all ….
I killed the slave that was a hanging thee ….
I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion ….
I would have made them skip ….
Similarly, his madness is not a straightforward process either. Madness is one of the central themes of the play. Lear's madness is part of its paradoxical structure. What is most striking about Shakespeare's presentation of this theme is that during his mad scenes, Lear's lunacy is allowed co-exist with his deepest insights. The matter is well expressed by Edgar in the most powerful paradox of the play; 'o matter and impertinency mixed / Reason in madness' (IV, vi, 178). Like Gloucester's blindness, Lear's madness becomes a positive value. Because he is mad, Lear is set free from conventional restraints and limitations and can see the defects of society from a new perspective. He reaches a degree of understanding which he never achieved while he was sane. He now understands how flatterers obscured his view of reality; he understands the hypocrisy of society with regard to crimes of lust; he rails against the common treatment of criminals, and against his own long neglect of the poor and defenceless. He sees, too, that the human condition is inevitably tragic:
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools …. IV, vi, 179
Lear is not the only character who exemplifies the play's preoccupation with reason in madness. Shakespeare chooses a trinity of men to suggest that the greatest wisdom may belong to those whom the world may regard as either mad or useless. Lear is a doting old man even before he descends into madness; the Fool is unbalanced, and Edgar a pretended madman, an outcast beggar, an incompetent manager of worldly affairs. The comments and attitudes of these three embody most of the wisdom that the play has to offer on questions of life and living.
The following are the main stages in Lear's madness, which is induced by a series of shocks:
The rebuff by Cordelia
The attack by Goneril, which makes him pretend not to know her and not to know himself
He begins to realise how he has wronged Cordelia
In Act I, Scene v, there is full recognition of his folly
At the end of Act I, he has his first serious premonition of insanity, 'O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven…'
The third great shock comes when he finds Kent in the stocks. This insult to his royal dignity causes the first physical symptoms of hysteria (hysterica passio: II, iv, 55).
The fourth great shock is his rejection by Regan. The storm is the projection on the macrocosm (the universe) of the tempest in the microcosm (the human mind) … 'O, Fool, I shall go mad'.
He identifies with the storm … a sign that reason has been overthrown by passion.
He is on the verge of madness when he invokes the storm to destroy the seeds of matter … 'My wits begin to turn'.
The appearance of Poor Tom drives him over the edge. Poor Tom is both a living embodiment of the 'naked poverty' and one who is, apparently, what Lear has feared to become. In acting out the madman's role, Edgar brings on Lear's madness. Exposure to the elements and physical exhaustion hinder his recovery from the shocks he has so far endured.
He is soon trying to identify himself with unaccommodated man by tearing off his clothes.
A. C. Bradley saw the real beginning of Lear's madness in 'Hast thou given all to thy two daughters?' (II, iv, 49), which marks the dominance of a fixed idea or obsession.
The madness of the elements, the professional 'madness' of the Fool, the pretended madness of Edgar, the madness of the King – all exemplify the break-up of society and the break-up of the universe itself under the impact of ingratitude and treachery. Then Gloucester appears, almost mad with grief at his son's treachery, and only Kent is wholly sane.
The 'trial scene' is the peak of Lear's madness. He imagines he sees Goneril and Regan … 'She kicked the poor King her father …'. Cordelia describes him at the peak of his madness ('Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds…'). The whole tableau marks a reversion to childhood.
Lear recovers his wits at the end of Act IV. His cure comes with sleep, music and Cordelia's love … and finally with his confession and kneeling to her.
After his recovery, Lear never really returns to the world of time and space. Cordelia becomes his whole world, and he lives in a kingdom that she creates for him by her presence.
Cordelia can be misunderstood. She is not to be seen as a totally meek, saintly sufferer, or as a totally passive victim. In many ways, if you think about it, she is very like her father! She has inherited his pride and like him, she too can be obstinate and stubborn. She responds to his pride with her own pride at the beginning. There is one detail in the reconciliation scene which tells us much about her character. While her father is still asleep, she can address him eloquently, and in a way which leaves her love for him in no doubt. But when he is awake, she finds it difficult to express her love and can speak only in monosyllables. There is one main line of development in her character: by the end, pride, though still evident, is submerged in love.
Cordelia appears in only four of the twenty-six scenes and speaks only about a hundred lines. Her influence on the overall effect of the play is, however, out of all proportion to this small contribution. For many readers, not all of them sentimentalists, her very presence in the play goes far in the direction of counterbalancing the evil represented by her sisters and their allies. She can be eloquent enough at times, but her characteristic feature, emphasised more than once, is silence, or quiet, economical speech. Lear remembers her voice as having been 'soft, gentle and low'. She herself recognises her inability to find words to express her deepest feelings:
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.
Her motto is 'Love and be silent'. All she can manage by way of verbal reaction to Kent's letter is the repetition of the name of 'Father', and then she goes off 'to deal with grief alone'. Her reticence during the reconciliation scene is again characteristic ('And so I am, I am … No cause, no cause …'). In fact, her only response to his final speech is one of tearful silence.
Kent wonders how Cordelia, Goneril and Regan could be the children of the same parents:
It is the stars,
The stars that govern us, govern our conditions;
Else one self mate and mate could not beget
Such different issues ….
There is, however, a sense in which Cordelia can be seen as embodying some aspects, good and bad, of Lear's character. She is as R.B. Heilman remarks, the side of Lear capable of tenderness, love and insight, but she also embodies some, though not all, of his proneness to error. His rash abdication amounts to a refusal of responsibility, a fatal withdrawal from the world of action. But Cordelia's refusal to co-operate in his childish scheme for the distribution of power also amounts to a withdrawal from responsibility. The combined withdrawal of Lear and Cordelia, through pride and self-will, allows power to pass into the hands of Goneril and Regan. As A.C. Bradley puts it, 'at a moment where terrible issues join, Fate makes on her the one demand which she is unable to meet'.
In the thematic scheme of the play, she is an embodiment of a concept of Nature totally opposed to that represented by Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloucester. For her, the natural bond between father and daughter is central to human existence. Her absolute fidelity to this is her most obvious claim on our attention and admiration. Her sisters break all the natural bonds and pursue their egotistical ends with remorseless energy. She upholds the principles on which civilised life must ultimately depend. Her role in this regard is defined by the Gentleman:
Thou hast a daughter
Which twain have brought her to.
The meaning of these lines is that Cordelia, through her selfless clarity with regard to her erring father has corrected the gross imbalance in Nature which Goneril and Regan have brought about.
rwkaz.deviantart.com
Goneril and Regan
Lear's two wicked daughters cannot quite be classified together as indistinguishable partners in evil. They are distinguished in various significant ways. Goneril, the elder, is the more active of the two in the pursuit of crime. She commits murder and adultery and plots the murder of her husband. She appends her name to Edmund's on the death-warrant for Lear and Cordelia. She has the more forceful character of the two, and as far as one can judge, fears nothing or nobody, either in this world or the next. She pays no heed to Lear's curse and, significantly, she is the only one of the major characters who never mentions the gods. Her suicide following her exposure and the collapse of her schemes is undertaken without hesitation and without any sign of inner turmoil. On the other hand, Regan's wickedness is not on as grand a scale as Goneril's. She is more petty, she is meaner, and she is weaker in character. She resorts to telling a lie about Edmund's intentions towards Gloucester, something Goneril would scorn doing. On the other hand, it is the 'weaker' Regan who becomes, in the end, the more violent in cruelty, turning even more savage than even Cornwall her husband. She jeers at the blinded Gloucester, telling him with relish that his son has betrayed him.
Perhaps the most important quality of mind that Goneril and Regan have in common is that they are rationalists and realists, totally unhampered by any moral sense or family feeling. Their aim in life is to satisfy their own desires. They are shrewd and practical and, within limits, most effective operators. What they lack above all is imagination. They have no time whatever for sentiment and fail to see why Lear should want to enjoy the outward symbols of status. They are prepared to use his old age as a justification for taking these away from him. In their logical scheme of things, old age has no use or function, and old men are superfluous nuisances.
Goneril, in particular, exhibits considerable cunning in bringing about Lear's humiliation. Regan would prefer a more cautious approach; Goneril acts to bring trouble to a head and gets things over quickly and ruthlessly. She first tells Oswald that he and his fellows may adopt a 'weary negligence' in attending to Lear's needs because she would 'breed occasions'. She then complains to Lear, with much show of reason and in a righteous tone about the behaviour of his men. Regan's dishonesty follows a similar pattern. She is mistress of the technique of guilt by association. When, for example, Gloucester comments on Edgar's supposed treachery, she asks, 'Was he not companion with the riotous knights / That tend upon my father' (II, I, 96).
Lear touches on an essential feature of both his daughters when in his madness he wonders about Regan's conduct: 'Let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in Nature that makes these hard hearts?' Hardness of heart is, of course, a mild term for what Goneril and Regan exhibit as they grow in power. When they hear of Gloucester's defection, they react spontaneously with brutal directness:
Regan: Hang him instantly.
Goneril: Pluck out his eyes. (III,vii, 4)
It is appropriate that some of the more revolting images of the play are used in connection with the two, Goneril in particular. She is a kite, her ingratitude has a serpent's tooth, she has a wolfish face; in her sharp-toothed unkindness, she is like a vulture attacking her father. Albany sees her as a gilded serpent; Gloucester says she has the fangs of a boar.
Both Goneril and Regan are efficient managers of the operations against their father and Gloucester. They prove effective in serving their own interests – up to a point. The turning point in their fortunes is reached when their strongest weapons – coolness and calculation – are destroyed by passion. When Goneril, seeing Edmund, gives him 'strange oeilliads and most speaking looks', she rouses Regan's jealousy. The passion they both feel for Edmund cannot be controlled or manipulated in the same way that their other activities could. But even before this passion clouds their reason, they are beginning to lose control. This is evident in their dealings with Gloucester, where their wildness and loss of emotional balance contrast with their coolly efficient attitude to Lear. Their intense rivalry over Edmund causes them to behave rashly and even foolishly, to abandon the careful, pragmatic approach that ensured their worldly success up to now. As Granville-Barker observed, 'Regan with a little law on her side, presumes on it, and Goneril poisons her, as she might a rat'. There is, of course, a fundamental irony in the fate of the two, particularly in the fact that children who could entertain no particle of feeling for their aged father who loved them should be destroyed by a consuming passion for an egotistical monster who cared nothing for either of them: 'Which of them shall I take? Both? One? Or neither?' (V, ii, 57).
shakespeare-lovers.deviantart.com
Edgar is easily the most puzzling character in the play. There are those who suggest that he is not really a character at all, and that the name Edgar covers a sequence of roles rather than a stable personality. One can identify five different Edgars over the course of the play:
The simple-minded victim of Edmund's scheming
The Bedlam Beggar
The peasant
The chivalrous champion who takes on Edmund in single combat; and
The choric commentator on the action of the play
Those who wonder about Shakespeare's intentions with regard to Edgar ask how one is to believe that the foolish, pitiful figure of the first few scenes can become the impressive, authoritative one who lends distinction to the closing scenes. The commonest explanation is to see the change in terms of the kind of moral development exhibited in other characters: Lear, Gloucester, Cordelia, Albany. Edgar, if he is to be seen as a single, consistent character, must then be understood as one who learns by experience, and by exposure to suffering, his own and that of others.
It is best, however, not to look too closely at Edgar's 'personality', or the lack of it, but to emphasise his functions as a choric commentator and as the play's wise philosopher. He embodies much of the religious feeling of the play, as can be seen from his numerous pronouncements on the relations of the gods with men. He has a deep and cheerful faith in the ultimate triumph of goodness, and in the benevolence of the Powers who govern man's destiny on earth. He is the one who can see beyond temporary changes in human fortune to some grand design. His function with regard to Gloucester is to save him from despair. It is appropriate that he should be the one to provide the answer to Gloucester's black indictment of the gods as no better than boys who kill flies for sport:
therefore, thou happy father
Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee ….
It is possible, at times, to find Edgar's moral stance a bit chilling and stern. One comment that springs to mind in this regard is his verdict on his dead father, delivered to the dying Edmund:
Make instruments to plague us:
The dark place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes …
Moralising comes naturally to him, but he is, on the whole, a compassionate moralist, feeling deeply for his father (Act IV, Scene i), acting as his guide and tutor, and repaying evil with kindness and sympathy. Those who read King Lear as a Christian play with a pagan setting can point to Edgar's behaviour, attitudes and comments. A striking instance is his treatment of the dying Edmund:
Let's exchange charity
Little wonder that Granville Barker called Edgar 'a very Christian gentleman'.
Edmund is one of the most imposing 'personalities' of the play. He is endowed by Shakespeare with singular force and energy. He has a distinctive point of view, a distinctive attitude to everybody and everything around him, and a highly individual mode of expression. He is perhaps the most evil of all of Shakespeare's characters, quite amoral, devoted exclusively to his own interests, and prepared to destroy anything or anybody that might interfere with his plans. There is, however, a significant contrast between him and Lear's evil daughters. Nobody has ever been able to come up with anything even moderately favourable to say on their behalf; in his case, on the other hand, one is compelled to acknowledge a certain superficial attractiveness, a range of interesting attitudes, a liveliness of mind, a real, if perverted, sense of humour, qualities which make it possible for one critic to call him the 'wittiest and most attractive of villains'! His 'wit' is, of course, exercised at the expense of his 'credulous father and brother noble', the first a man of limited intellect to begin with, the second an incredibly naïve victim. His positive qualities include a considerable strength of will, an excellent presence, and enough charm and plausibility of manner to impress a variety of observers, including Goneril and Regan.
Our first view of him is as a rational, cynical observer of the follies and superstitions of other men, particularly Gloucester. He is very much the 'modern' man, with no time for traditional values or for the accepted view of things. He is an atheist. He denies any relationship between the 'orbs from whom we do exist' and his own destiny. He also refuses to accept the central notion of an organic universe, with all the bonds and relationships that this implies. He recognises no ties between himself and others, no obligations on his part. He thus rejects the scheme of values represented by Cordelia and Albany. The latter, in a famous comment, holds that a strong bond of natural sympathy binds human beings to each other, like twigs to the branches of a tree.
Edmund has no principles of any kind, nor does he pretend to have. He places no value on anybody else. The claims of blood-relationship, friendship or loyalty mean nothing to him. He looks on others either as the means of helping him to make his way in the world, or as hindrances to his advancement, and he acts accordingly ('Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land'). His attitude to Goneril and Regan illustrates both his total heartlessness and his cynical humour:
To both these sisters have I sworn my love
Each jealous of the other, as the stung
Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?
Both? One? Or neither?
He never allows himself to be distracted from his aims, his eventual one being the crown. He takes his chances as they come. He is master (like some in Westminster and Washington today) of the technique of plausible lying and this is most evident in his undoing of Edgar. Even as he betrays his own father to Cornwall he talks of loyalty!
Shakespeare provides various subtle touches in his portrait of Edmund. As he advances in the world he becomes a snob. 'If thou art noble', he tells the masked Edgar, 'I do forgive thee'. He finally exposes himself to ridicule and humiliation when he begins to regard himself as Albany's equal, and tries to patronise him ('Sir, you speak nobly'). Albany, however, is more than a match for him here, and puts him firmly in his place:
Sir, by your patience
I hold you but as a subject of this war
Not as a brother
Half-blooded fellow, yes …
Perhaps the ultimate sign of Edmund's worthlessness as a human being is his belated gesture in attempting to save Lear and Cordelia, and his motives for the attempt. The significant point about the episode is that it is only after Goneril confesses to poisoning Regan and then commits suicide that Edmund, believing that he was loved, thinks of trying to save Lear and Cordelia:
Yet Edmund was beloved.
The one the other poisoned for my sake
And after slew herself …
I pant for life. Some good I mean to do
Despite of mine own nature … V, iii, 240
It is worth noticing that in the presence of the dead bodies of those he supposes loved him, he says nothing about them but thinks only of himself, and even at this late hour of his life enjoys the luxury of being 'loved' in so extreme and dramatic a fashion. There is a note of sentimental vanity and self-congratulation in his closing speech. It is also characteristic of him that he talks impressively about meaning to do good, and that his only real effort in this direction comes too late to be of any use. It may, perhaps, be idle speculation about his motives for wanting to save Lear and Cordelia. One suggestion is that he is moved by Edgar's account of his father's death. Another is that surrounded as he is at this point by 'good' characters, he takes on some of the qualities of his environment. Another way to see his action is that having lost everything he cared for (his own life and worldly position), he can perform his dramatic gesture to impress the onlookers, without any loss to himself, but without any real commitment either. There is also the possibility that we are to take Edgar's last dramatic gesture as Shakespeare's way of saying that even the most morally depraved can sometimes display unaccustomed virtue in certain circumstances.
One of Gloucester's main functions in the play is as a parallel to Lear. Like Lear, he is betrayed by the child he loves, and supported by the one he unjustly rejects. His sufferings may be traced to human folly and injustice, and, like Lear's, these sufferings purify his character and enlighten him. He dies a better man than he is when we first meet him. There are also parallels of character and temperament between the two: like Lear, Gloucester is credulous, hasty and affectionate. It must, of course, be remembered that Gloucester is built on a very much smaller scale than Lear. He has nothing of Lear's tempestuous force and energy. He is the kind of man one might encounter anywhere in fiction or, indeed, in Westminster or Washington: sensual, careless of the moral code, easy-going, and easily prone to deceit. One aspect of his behaviour is difficult to credit: the ease with which he falls a victim of Edmund's deception. Granville-Barker has suggested that no human being could be as gullible as Gloucester is here, but that Shakespeare asks us to allow him the fact of the deception, just as we have allowed him Lear's partition of the kingdom. Such a starting-point, the dramatists 'let's pretend', is essential to the process of getting the story going. In any case, Shakespeare also makes Gloucester a believer in astrology, 'these late eclipses of the sun and moon': if he can believe these things, we feel, he can believe anything.
There are strong indications that Gloucester is not a man of firm moral purpose. His flippant attitude to his 'fault' in begetting Edmund is a clear indication of this, as is the fact that the illegitimate Edmund is younger, not older, than Edgar. (Think about it!).
It is only when prosperous times change to bad, when multiple suffering strikes, that the 'new' Gloucester begins to emerge. He tries to fight against the facts of his predicament and of those nearest to him. Rather than be conscious of his 'huge sorrows', he would choose madness like Lear's. His conversion from benevolent, helpless neutrality to tentative support for Lear is not exactly heroic. He does his best to ensure that his help for the king will not be noticed by the dangerous Cornwall. 'If he asks for me', he tells Edmund, 'I am ill and gone to bed'. The irony here is that in confiding in Edmund he is ensuring not his own safety but his destruction, his blinding and casting out of doors.
The essential point to make about Gloucester is his transformation from a weak, erratic sensuality and a feeble-minded devotion to astrology into an impressive witness to the just dealings of Providence with men, and to the power of filial love. Like Lear, Gloucester attains a higher conception of himself and of man's destiny through appalling suffering. He grows better through suffering which elicits from him a profoundly religious response. His astrological superstition is the nearest he gets to a sense of the supernatural until after he has endured torture and deprivation. His real transformation begins during the horrible scene in which he is blinded by Cornwall; the extremity of his suffering causes him to call on the gods for help: then he prays for Edgar and asks forgiveness for his own sins. Before he casts himself down to what he thinks will be his death, he kneels and prays to the 'mighty gods' and in their sight, he renounces the world. After he has been saved from death by Edgar his sense of heavenly goodness deepens. It is, paradoxically, through his own pain and sorrow and the misery of others that he is at last made aware of 'the bounty and the benison of heaven'. It is surely worth remarking that after all he has suffered Shakespeare has him utter this prayer at the end:
You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me:
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
To die before you please.
It is necessary to distinguish between the character of the Fool and his role. There is really little enough that one can say about the personality of the Fool, or about his distinctive qualities; there is a good deal to be said about his function in the play, particularly in relation to Lear.
Shakespeare inherited the Fool from the drama of his predecessors – the court jester, the clown. His most obvious function was to entertain the vulgar members of the audience ('the groundlings') with his antics, songs, jokes, quibbles and dances. There is an element of this in the Lear Fool, who provides some lively entertainment. Those who write about the character of Lear's Fool all point out his utter fidelity and loyalty to his master, in good times and in very bad ones. There is also his touching devotion to Cordelia, reflected in the words of the attendant Knight to Lear ('Since my young lady's going away into France, Sir, the Fool hath much pined away').
There has been a good deal of debate on whether the Fool is sane, mad, pretending to be mad, or just half-witted. A.C. Bradley has an excellent comment on the matter, particularly in relation to the storm scenes, where the Fool's role becomes vital. Bradley asks the question:
Are we to suppose that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is a mere repetition of that of the beggar – that it, too, is a mere pretence?
He argues that the Fool lives in a logical world of his own, and does not observe the normal distinctions between sense and nonsense, what is the wise thing to do and the unwise. He is a being, in Bradley's words,
… to whom a responsible and consistent course of action, even responsible use of language, is at the best of times difficult.
Therefore, a good summary of his mental state might be that he is 'quick-witted though not whole-witted'.
In the overall scheme of the play, the Fool's main task is to expose the folly of all those who are supposed to be fully sane and capable in a world of practical affairs from which he is, being a Fool, excluded. His relationship with Lear in the storm scenes is the real justification for his role. He is Lear's conscience, his inner voice, which consistently cries out against Lear's error and foolishness. He is also seen to be Lear's tutor, giving his master many bitter lessons on the realities of life. When Lear, in Kent's words, 'falls to folly', the Fool must rise to wisdom. There is continuous and subtle irony in the Fool's remarks about folly, a keyword in the play, and in the contrast between these remarks and his own behaviour. On the one hand, he comments severely on the lack of practical wisdom shown by Kent in taking the side of Lear, whose cause is a lost one ('If thou wouldst follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb'). Here, of course, he is arguing exactly as Goneril and Regan might: he sees folly as not watching one's own interests. Again, when he finds Kent in the stocks, he lectures him on the folly of adhering to the losing side, and the wisdom of abandoning one's loyalty when self-interest points to this course: 'Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after'. This, of course, is rich in irony: the Fool's words here are mainly a parody of similar sentiments in the speeches of Goneril, Regan and Edmund. He will not take his own advice, nor will Kent. Both elect to turn their backs on 'practical', selfish wisdom, and instead, they choose unselfish, devoted folly:
But I will tarry; the Fool will stay
And let the wise man fly …
It is worth noticing that nearly all of the Fool's numerous references to fools and folly are directed at Lear's poor management of his own interests. The Fool is not concerned with worldly success or failure; he is much more concerned with the fact that Lear has acted out of a false sense of values, has failed to understand essentials, and, like many contemporary politicians in England at this time, has shown incredibly poor judgement in his dealings with the division of his kingdom and in his dealings with his daughters. It is the essential task of the Fool to set Lear thinking on the meaning of his actions, and to stimulate in him a re-appraisal of his attitudes.
Albany is another of those characters (Lear and Gloucester being the other great examples) who develop in moral stature during the course of the action. There are two distinct phases in his career in the play. In the early one, he is clearly under the sway of his strong-minded wife Goneril. Such, indeed, is her dominance that he is at first is unable to act independently of her will, however differently he may feel. He does not want to be cruel to Lear and is almost certainly telling the truth when he protests that he does not know the reason for Lear's violent rage. On the other hand, there is a strong hint that he shows himself less than enthusiastic about Lear's stay at his house; the Knight tells Lear that 'the abatement of kindness' appears in the Duke himself also and your daughter'.
When Lear does decide to leave, Albany makes a half-hearted stand against Goneril's decision, only to be brushed aside contemptuously:
Albany: I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
To the great love I bear you ….
Goneril: Pray you, content …
A little later, Goneril gives her frank assessment of her husband's character:
This milky gentleness and course of yours
Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,
You are much more attax'd for want of wisdom
Than praised for harmless mildness …
Little wonder that she leaves him behind when she goes to seek Regan's help. She regards him (and at this point in their relationship, not without cause) as an inoffensive, negative, dull spirited man, wanting to leave well alone. Indeed, this seems to be his motto:
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
However, the 'new' Albany who recoils in horror from what has been done to Gloucester is quite a different character from the earlier one. Granville-Barker makes a good point when he says that Albany is one of those, 'who let their wrath gather beneath a placid surface till on a sudden it boils over, and if the cause of it lies deep they are never the same again'. Goneril makes herself intolerable to him and he determines to avenge Gloucester's wrongs:
See thyself devil!
Proper deformity shows not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman … Gloucester I live
To thank thee for the love thou show'st the king,
And to revenge thine eyes….
Albany has by now cast aside his timidity and begun to exert a moral authority that justifies Oswald's 'never man so chang'd'. Goneril can no longer put him in his place; her heaped insults no longer cow him or even greatly impress him. He is far from 'the milk livered man' she still believes him to be; he answers her in something like her own kind of language; his hands 'are apt enough to dislocate and tear / Thy flesh and bones'.
In the last moments of the play, he becomes a major force, a calm, noble presence presiding over the course of events. The landing of Cordelia's French army places him in a dilemma: he must fight against her soldiers because they are invaders, but he is reluctant because Cordelia represents her father. Shakespeare, however, underplays the difficulty of giving Edmund the leading part in the action against Cordelia's forces. Albany's real strength of character emerges in his dealings with Edmund after the battle. He puts the adventurous upstart in his place ('I hold you as a subject of this war / Not as a brother'). In the end, Shakespeare preserves Albany's dignity and superiority by giving Edgar the task of disposing of Edmund.
You might also like to read an analysis of Image Patterns in King Lear here.
You might also like to read 'Some Central Themes in King Lear' which touches on topics like The gods in King Lear, Nature in King Lear, The Death of Lear, etc…. here.


If you've ever fancied making your own authentic pizzas then Allan Brown's class could be what you are looking for.
Allan, the head chef at Fanelli's in Merchant Square in Glasgow is giving cooking lessons for anyone who wants to learn how to prepare the perfect pizza at home.
29 year old Allan, from Muirhead, said: "Cooking is such a simple thing, so why not do it in your own home on a Friday night?
"The key is the dough – the thinner, the better and in and out of the oven as quick as possible. It's all about the crispiness.
Sarah Smith who lives in Glasgow's West End said that her olives and anchovies topping was a bit too salty.
23 year old Victoria Cruikshank said that she will use her new-found skills to impress people.
The classes at Fanelli's run regularly and there are day time classes available for families. Visit www.fanellisglasgow.com for more information.


text:
Nan Joyce (1940 – 7 August 2018) was an Irish Travellers' rights activist. She worked to improve the lives of Travellers in Ireland and Northern Ireland from 1981 until her death in 2018. She was the first Traveller candidate in an Irish general election, in 1982.

Family life
Joyce was born Ann O'Donoghue in Clogheen, County Tipperary, in 1940. She was the second of nine children and her parents were John O'Donoghue, a horse trainer, and Nan McCann. Her father was an avid reader who taught his children the history of landmarks and castles they saw on their travels. He read medical works which enabled him to treat many of the illnesses of his children. He spoke Cant, and could read and write in Irish and English. His wife was illiterate.

Joyce's father died in a police cell when she was twelve, and her mother was sent to prison for theft committed to support her family. Joyce took over the role of mother and roamed the country with her siblings. Some years later, she married a Traveller, John Joyce, and they had eleven children.

She endured many hardships including prejudice and intolerance, as well as living by roadsides with no facilities, exposed to severe weather, leading to illness and despair. The conditions led two of her daughters to have nervous breakdowns and they were committed to hospitals. Another daughter contracted severe lead poisoning when batteries were dumped at their camp, and she entered long-term care. People dumped their rubbish at Joyce's camp during the 1982 bin-collector's strike, which attracted rats, leading to the death of her one-year-old granddaughter, who caught meningitis from them.

She lived for a time in Clondalkin before moving to Tallaght where she began her public life, and later lived in Belfast, where she continued to work for Travellers' rights and well-being.

Public activism

Entry into public life
Joyce's family from her marriage were living at a halting site in Clondalkin when they were forced out in 1981 by Dublin County Council bulldozers. They moved to Tallaght where Joyce enrolled her children at school. While the family was settling into their new surroundings, the county council tried to open the new Tallaght By-pass, where over a hundred Traveller families lived, without fulfilling their legal obligation to offer them an alternative site. Some angry locals from the settled community threatened the Joyces and other Traveller families, giving them an ultimatum to quit the area.

When they refused to move, hostile locals, with the support of some community politicians, organized a vigilante mob to patrol all open space in the area, and they visited the Traveller camp to intimidate them by wielding hurleys and shouting "Out! Out! Out!", which terrified elderly Travellers and children. Some of the settled Tallaght locals came to the Travellers' defence and stood with them. Broadcaster Gay Byrne also supported them and transmitted his radio programme from the halting site. This gave Joyce her first opportunity to speak publicly on behalf of her community about the injustices they endured.

She read the local papers regularly and was disturbed by how they misrepresented the Traveller community: "I wouldn't wonder for the settled people to be against us because they were hearing nothing but bad about us," she said. She wrote a Travellers' manifesto describing their needs and delivered it to all the local newspaper offices. She was part of a group of Travellers and settled people who created the Travellers' Rights Committee and held meetings at her home to involve other Travellers. She gave talks around the country to schools, colleges, and convents to educate people about Traveller history and heritage. She and the Travellers' Rights Committee led marches and pickets, and some of these agitations were conducted outside the Dáil. The first Travellers' rights organisation, called Minceir Misli, evolved from the Travellers' Rights Committee in 1983, and Joyce continued her work with them.

Election campaign
Joyce was selected by the Committee to run as a candidate in the general election of November 1982, in the Dublin South-West constituency, becoming the first Traveller to compete for a Dáil seat. She made a documentary for the BBC during her election campaign to improve her support. She petitioned people for votes in the streets of Dublin, wearing a hidden microphone and while being secretly filmed. She received many good wishes but also met people who told her that Travellers were "dirt" and "filth" and "should be burned". Another constituency candidate, Richard O'Reilly, ran to oppose her on an anti-Traveller platform using the slur, "Get the knackers out of Tallaght" as his campaign slogan. Joyce was not elected but she attracted twice as many votes as O'Reilly.

Shortly after the election, she was arrested and wrongly charged with theft of jewellery. The case attracted widespread publicity but the charges were dropped in court for lack of evidence, although her confidence was damaged. Many believed she was framed because of her campaigning.

Speech to international gathering
She attended a Trócaire seminar in Galway in 1983 where she impressed her seminar group which included Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Seán MacBride, and she was selected as chairperson to represent them. She delivered a speech to thousands of attending bishops and humanitarians from all over the world: "You people are very concerned about the Third World. I think you should also be concerned about us, we are the fourth world. We live among rats in camps or caravans ... our children suffer from as many diseases as the children of the Third World." She received a standing ovation, and The Irish Times reported that, "Mrs Joyce had an extraordinary impact on the seminar, receiving more applause than anyone else who presented reports."

Belfast
She later moved to Belfast for a number of years. There, she created a group to fight for Travellers' rights and lobbied successfully for new halting sites in West Belfast with a fresh water supply, toilets, a playschool, and a clinic for babies. She continued her school visits in the area to explain how important it was that Traveller children learned about their culture and heritage. These visits influenced the schools' use of teaching materials and course content to address Traveller children directly.

Legacy
Joyce was one of the best-known Irish Travellers. She pioneered the cause of Travellers' rights and heightened awareness of the many hidden problems they faced. The existence of the Travellers' Rights Committee in the 1980s fostered many offshoot organizations dedicated to the needs of Travellers. She published Traveller: an autobiography in 1985, which has received scholarly attention, and was the subject of a chapter in a study of influential Irish women, Mná na hÉireann: Women who Shaped Ireland, in 2009.

Notes

References

Bibliography

1940 births
2018 deaths
20th-century Irish people
20th-century Irish women
21st-century Irish people
21st-century Irish women
Irish Travellers
Irish human rights activists
Irish women activists
Irish women in politics
People from County Tipperary

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Facebook sued over 'illegally collecting biometric data' of Instagram users
By Stephen Warwick
Instagram logo on phone (Image credit: Joe Maring / iMore)
Facebook has been sued in California.
It's over allegations it collected the biometric data of 100 million Instagram users.
It is claimed Facebook stored and profited from the data without users' knowledge or consent.
A new lawsuit filed against Facebook claims it illegally collected the biometric data of 100 million users without their knowledge or consent.
As reported by Bloomberg:
Facebook Inc. is facing new allegations that it illegally harvests the biometric data of users, this time in a lawsuit that targets the company's photo-sharing app Instagram.
As the report notes, Facebook has already offered to pay up $650 million in order to settle a similar lawsuit claiming it illegally collected biometric data using a photo-tagging tool for Facebook.
Now, a new lawsuit filed Monday claims something similar may have happened on Instagram:
In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in state court in Redwood City, California, the company is accused of collecting, storing and profiting from the biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent.
According to Illinois privacy law, the unauthorized collection of biometric data is prohibited, and companies can be forced to pay up to $1,000 per violation. The claims that it was not until the beginning of 2020 that Facebook started informing Instagram users of the practice.
Regarding the earlier Facebook case, a judge rejected Facebook's offer to settle up for $550 million, stating it was a "significant reduction" from the $1,000 set by Illinois legislature. A revised offer of $650 million was agreed by both parties but has not been approved by the judge as yet. If the settlement goes through, affected users could be paid between $200 and $400 each.
Stephen Warwick
Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design.
Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9
OpenCore let's you install macOS Ventura to older Macs — even if Apple doesn't want you to
We could be seeing Apple Search take on Google sooner rather than later
Wombat Pine Professional mechanical keyboard review: custom feel with pre-built convenience
AirPods Pro 2 have stiff competition as Bowers & Wilkins launch new Pi7 S2 and Pi5 S2 earbuds
Finally! HiDock app lets you set Mac Dock settings on a per-display basis


text:
Media Release: $14 million renovation of White Bay Power Station kicks off
After a years-long community campaign to save the White Bay Power Station from demolition, remediation work will finally begin on the site this month, says Jamie Parker, Member for Balmain.
A community petition set up in 2020 by the Member for Balmain gathered over 3,000 signatures following suggestions by the government that the structure could be torn down. The petition called for the publicly-owned site to be restored rather than demolished and sold off for waterfront apartments.
In response to community pressure, the government dedicated $14 million to remediation and conservation works that will begin this month.
Jamie Parker, Member for Balmain says:
"The fact that this remarkable heritage structure is still standing is a credit to the fantastic organising power of our community.
"If the government had its way, this site would probably be leveled to make way for luxury waterfront apartments.
"Every other global city is embarking on projects of visionary urban transformation for heritage waterfront sites like White Bay Power Station. Our community wants the same for this site.
"In response to the community campaign the government has committed $14 million to remediation and conservation works as part of the Bays West Place Strategy.
"This is a huge win for the campaign to protect heritage and preserve public land for public use.
"Repair works on the interior and exterior of the building will start this month in order to prepare it for adaptive re-use.
"While a final decision hasn't been made on what the structure will become, we're pushing for an innovative public use. This could be Sydney's answer to London's Tate Modern," he said.
Monday, 7 Feb 2022