Seven deadly sins in Dr.Fastus

Answer 1

The Seven Deadly Sins appear as a pageant in Christopher Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus (II.iii) - the devil Mephistopheles brings them on as a kind of circus act to distract Faustus from an interest in saying his prayers.

Pageants of the Seven Deadly Sins seem to have been common in medieval literature, there is a similar very gaudy display of the Vices in Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene - by far the most popular narrative poem of the Elizabethan period. (They appear as coachmen to Lucifera's chariot in Book I of the poem).

Marlowe himself was accused of Atheism, and there are many passages in his work which suggest there may have been some grounds to the charge. He would have enjoyed scaring his audience rigid with a show of devils he himself did not believe in.