Christopher Marlowe and His Use of the Morality Tradition

Abstract

<p>By focusing on Marlowe's borrowings from the tradition of the morality play, the study endeavours to form a picture of this playwright as neither a teacher nor an iconoclast, but as a continuer of a debate. The debate involves the morality form of his dram as and their non-morality content. It remains unresolved as an indication of Marlowe's own irresolution Tamburlaine dramatizes the debate between accepting or rejecting a world conqueror; The Jew of Malta vacillates between pitying and condemning its villain-hero, Barabas; Edward the Second has the curious appeal of a study in weakness; Doctor Faustus exposes the double culpability of its rebellious scholar-hero and of the restricting Christian system which Faustus discards. The study analyzes these four plays to show that Marlow uses the morality tradition in furthering his debate; by submitting this tradition to manipulation, perversion, debilitation and violation, the playwright remains clearly in control of the morality structures he uses. Two discoveries result from an examination of such control: Marlowe's artistry in being unresolved continues to be an area of fascination and his deliberate irresolution militates against calling him a morality playwright.</p>