If the Seven Deadly Sins were the warning signs for avoiding damnation, the Virtues were waymarkers to salvation.

The Seven Cardinal Virtues

1. Temperance (abstinence, moderation)

2. Prudence (providence, foresight, circumspection, consideration, wise conduct)

3. Justice (justice, equity, fair judgement)

4. Fortitude (strength under pressure)

5. Faith (piety, duty to and belief in God)

6. Hope (hope of salvation)

7. Charity (love of, benevolence to, others)

A godly life won a heavenly crown. If life was a journey and each person a pilgrim on the highway, conduct determined destination. Virtue's path was hard – steep, thorny, stony, winding, tiring. The way for the carnal man of weak character, Mr Worldly Wiseman, was easy, a ‘primrose path’, as Macbeth puts it, but leading to an ‘everlasting bonfire’ and ‘sulphurous pit’. Virtue required steadfastness of belief. Stephen Bateman's engraving Of Faith depicts a knight, fully armoured in the Elizabethan style. He bears a shield with the cross of St George on it and has a lance and a sword. He stands on the body of the Devil sprawled on his back and looks out across a bay where a ship is sailing and over which the clouds have opened to reveal, in Hebrew, the words of God. The accompanying signification reads, ‘The man in armour signifieth all stedfast beleuers [believers] of the veritie being armed with constant zeale of Christianitie, and weaponed with the shielde of liuely faith, the spere of continuance and the sworde of the word of God: the Deuil vnder him is temptation being ouercome by faith in Christ Iesus’. In Of Justice, Justice carries the scales of equity, a sword to ‘cut off all rebellious persons and offenders’ and has one eye in the middle of her forehead representing ‘vpright iudgement’.

Because Dream is not designed as a tragedy, the potential for sins to take hold and destroy is persistently turned aside, thwarted, marginalized or resolved. Sinful behaviour holds our attention because it is intriguing and potentially dangerous, but virtues are evident and engage actively with sins. The anger of Egeus and the demand for death is a real danger that needs to be pre- empted.