If Lil Wayne had carked it on cough syrup this weekend, I would have spent today’s post trying to defend my fervently held but ridiculous belief that Lollipop is the best pop song ever. (It just is. Listen to it! If you told me it was created by robot lizards from outer space, I’d believe you. Of course, it’s also true that all of the song’s words are stupid and gross.) But it seems Weezy will live to take another sip of Texas Tea, thank goodness, and we can get back to reading Christopher Marlowe’s smashing Doctor Faustus, which needs no defense at all. It was written over four hundred years ago, but it feels like last week’s episode of a cheeky and surreal soap opera. Here (slightly abridged) is how three of the seven deadly sins introduce themselves to Faustus:

WRATH: I am Wrath. I had neither father nor mother. I leaped out of a lion’s mouth when I was scarce half an hour old, and ever since I have run up and down the world with this case of rapiers, wounding myself when I had nobody to fight withal.

ENVY: I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt. I am lean with seeing others eat. O, that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone! Then thou shouldst see how fat I would be.

SLOTH: Heigh-ho. I am Sloth. I was begotten on a sunny bank, where I have lain ever since, and you have done me great injury to bring me from thence.