r consider such an act. Later in the play Cordelia, now banished for her honesty, still loves her father and displays great compassion and grief for him as we see in the following: "Cordelia. O my dear father, restoration hang Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss Repair those violent harms that my two sisters Have in reverence made." Act IV, Scene vii, lines 26-29. Cordelia could be expected to display bitterness or even satisfaction at her father's plight, which was his own doing. However, she still loves him, and does not fault him for the injustice he did her. Clearly, Shakespeare has crafted Cordelia as a character whose nature is entirely good, unblemished by any trace of evil throughout the entire play. As an example of one of the wholly evil characters in the play, we shall turn to the subplot of Edmund's betrayal of his father and brother. Edmund has devised a scheme to discredit his brother Edgar in the eyes of their father Gloucester. Edmund is fully aware of his evil nature, and revels in it as seen in the following quotation: "Edmund. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. ... I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing." Act I, scene ii, lines 127-137, 143-145. Clearly, Edmund recognizes his own evil nature and decides to use it to his advantage. He mocks the notion of any kind of supernatural or divine influence over one's destiny. Edgar must go into hiding because of Edmund's deception, and later Edmund betrays Gloucester himself, naming him a traitor which results...
