Consider Dr. Faustus as a morality play.

Ans. What Marlowe creates out of the story of Faustus is a medieval morality play with a late Renaissance temper. Despite its conformity to the later morality plays, ‘Dr. Faustus’ is by no means an evidence of the thorough change of spirit in Marlowe. Faustus is too stiff necked a pursuer to deny the medieval morality tradition. Here we see the typical temptation by no evil figure. Rather we see a knowing Faustus deliberately setting himself upon an evil course.
The supernatural context of Faustus’ tragedy and the central importance of the theological concepts of evil and suffering within that context distinguish it from all other tragedies of the time, and suggest its relationship to the Eng morality play. Even though Marlowe’s play seems by and large to grow directly from the English Faust Book rather than from the stage tradition of the moralities, there is no doubt that the morality tradition provided Marlowe with both its thematic precedence and devices of dramaturgy on which to draw. Hardin Craig’s definition of a morality play as the presentation of man in the post lapsarian situation, where he is destined to die in sin unless he be saved by the intervention of Divine Grace and by repentance, is very certainly and properly applicable to “Dr. Faustus”.
This general thematic import of morality play was very characteristically embodied in a dramatic structure defined by the conflict of the abstract forces of Good and Evil in the hero’s soul, who represented all mankind Undoubtedly, the conflict between the forces of Good and Evil provides the major dramatic tension in ‘Dr Faustus’, and Faustus himself ‘stands and falls’, as the central figure in the conflict, the only human figure of any real dramatic importance. But we have already reached the point where the distinctions must be drawn. Is the conflict of Good and Evil, which Marlowe has certainly heightened in his departure from the Faust Book, the very characteristic conflict of morality?
Marlowe has emphasized the vacillation of the hero between the extremes of Good and Evil through the visual presentation of the two Angels to crystalise the alternatives. There presence in the play has often been attributed to the influence of the morality tradition and certainly to the extent that they are complete embodiments of the conflict in Faustus’ mind. The Angles really appear to be a characteristic device of a play in the morality tradition. But that by no means exhorts their significance and function. In the first place, Angles and Devils in Marlowe’s time were not considered abstractions or even metaphors for the operations of the human mind, they are conceived of as real spiritual beings created by God and granted certain powers and functions. Among these, was the power to influence by suggestion not constrain, the human mind. Noticed that Faustus never directs his own attention to the Good and Evil Angles as dramatic entities, he neither speaks directly to them, not shows and sensible awareness of their spiritual presence. Their words become suggestive however of the drift of his own thought, hence their activity remain on a spiritual rather than psychological level in so far as Faustus is concerned.
Again, the question to rise is: Is Faustus truly a representative of mankind or even of a general class of men as the strict morality always was? There are many things about Faustus which would appear at first to put him outside the realm of a representative man: his uncommon intellectual attainments, his extra ordinary reach of imagination and ambition, his arcane pursuit of forbidden magic, his bold and conscious arrogance in the face of the divinely established order. The dreams and desires that spun him to the fatal exercise of freedom are far more superhuman; their very singularity helps to establish him as one of the most individualized of the Elizabethan stage. Nevertheless, the qualities and motivations which make Faustus an individual, make him at the same time a figure of more particular or personal significance. There is also a deeper and more general sense in which the Faustian figure stands for more than himself. It is bound up with the mythic pattern of the forbidden quest which more often than not carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. Faustus is Everyman as Intellectual with the axiological choice centred in the problem of knowledge. As Everyman he embodies a perennial human aspiration; and as Intellectual he is also aware of the exploits in its philosophical dimensions.
The serious centre is always accompanied by the parabolic carves of always and buffoonery in a morality play. The burlesque with the secondary dramatic characters and the inclusion of farce in Faustus’ life, in his triumph or humiliation is the typical morality elements of ‘Dr Faustus’. The flowing poetry conveying dramatic moods and tensions is a unique morality creation. These all are given an artistic unity by their being made natural concomitants of the dramatic design. It is a morality play ending in damnation, the final chorus enunciating the lesson in the way of a morality epilogue. A thorough study thus makes clear that it a modern time production with a distinct hang-over from the older morality tradition. It is a medieval morality play with the theme modified by the spirit of new age.