Portrayal of Evil
             In the allegory The Faerie Queen, by Edmund Spenser, evil is depicted primarily as character. In Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe and Everyman written by an anonymous author, evil is depicted as an action.
             In The Faerie Queen, Spenser creates an allegory: The characters of his far-off, fanciful "Faerie Land" are meant to have a symbolic meaning in the real world. The main theme of Book I is the idea that our native virtue must be augmented or transformed if it is to become true Christian virtue (Alpers 5). Spenser has a high regard for the natural qualities of creatures; he shows the lion and many human characters have an inborn inclination toward good. Yet, he consistently shows their failure when faced with the worst evils. These evils can only be defeated by the Christian good. High on Spenser list of evils in the Catholic Church, and this enmity lends a political overtone of the poem, since the religious conflicts of the time were inextricably tied to politics (Alpers 8). In this epic poem, several characters represent evil. In Book I the plot mostly deals with the attempts of evildoers trying to separate Redcrosse from Una, which is separating holiness from truth. Most of the villains are meant by Spenser to represent the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, Redcrosse must defeat villains who mimic the falsehood of the Roman Church. The first of these is Error. When Redcrosse chokes the beast, "her vomit full of bookes and papers" (1.1. 177), these papers represent Roman Catholic propaganda that was put out in Spenser's time against Queen Elizabeth and Anglicanism (Alpers 15). Redcrosse may be able to defeat these obvious and disgusting errors, but before he is united with truth, he is still lost and can easily be deceived. Archimago is able through deception and lust, to separate Redcrosse from Una. Once separated Redcrosse is susceptible to falsehood, he soon falls prey ...