#  Live fast, die young, inspire Shakespeare 

 





October 10, 2025

 

 

Many years ago, Stephen Greenblatt tried to convince the writing team behind “Shakespeare in Love” that they were chasing the wrong Renaissance playwright — that the life of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare’s contemporary and rival, would make a better movie.  
  
Decades later, Greenblatt has made his case with “Dark Renaissance,” a literary history of the knowns and unknowns of the life of Marlowe, killed at 29.  
  
The book is not just a thrilling read — full of transgression and espionage — but also an argument for Marlowe’s literary significance: as much as anyone the inventor of the Elizabethan theater that Shakespeare would soon perfect, and for the tragic grandeur woven through his work, his own meteoric rise and squalid, murky death.  
  
In an edited interview with the Gazette, Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, explains what drew him irresistibly to Marlowe, and what Marlowe’s story can tell our time.  
  
You can read the interview [here](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/live-fast-die-young-inspire-shakespeare/).



 

 

 



 

 

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