In books such as Will in the World and The Swerve, Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt is known for shining a bright light on dark corners of our cultural history. In his latest, Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival (Norton, September 9), a thrilling work of historical excavation, he brings to life the distant world of Elizabethan England—at once deeply strange and strangely familiar—and its most fascinating figure, Christopher Marlowe. The son of a lowly cobbler, Marlowe got himself educated at Cambridge University and wrote some of the most successful stage dramas of his time, inspiring William Shakespeare himself. (Blank verse in iambic pentameter? Shakespeare borrowed the form from Marlowe.) Then, at age 29, Marlowe’s life was tragically cut short in a murder that remains unsolved to this day. About that—and much else in the playwright’s mysterious life, including his possible employment as a spy—Greenblatt has a theory. Dark Renaissance earned a place on our list of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2025, and the author answered our questions by email.

Why should people know about Christopher Marlowe?

First and foremost, Marlowe’s life story is extraordinary: a creative genius, a daring risk-taker, a spy. He blazed like a comet, and his brilliant, doomed life takes us into the heart of the dangerous world of the English Renaissance. Marlowe was the first great master of the public theater—the original mass entertainment industry—and his achievement made possible the career of his contemporary William Shakespeare.

The circumstances around Marlowe’s death are mysterious. Do you feel you were able to crack the mystery?

I carefully track the way that the state gathered evidence against Marlowe in the month before his murder, evidence that was presented to Queen Elizabeth herself. In the margin of the report listing the things that Marlowe was allegedly saying, the queen wrote that it should be prosecuted “to the full.” Those words do not prescribe what actually happened on the fatal day that Marlowe spent with his three sinister acquaintances, but they may help us to understand why the killer and his accomplices were quickly exonerated and released.

What inspired you during the writing of the book? What were you reading, listening to, watching?

I felt the resonance of novels by John le Carré and, still more, by the great Spanish writer Javier Marías. Somewhere in the background, too, are Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

Where and when did you write the book? Describe the scene, the time of day, the necessary accouterments or talismans.

I did much of the initial research for the book in my quiet study on the top floor of Widener Library at Harvard. In the stacks on the floors below me—and within easy reach—were 3 million books. I continued the research in Canterbury, where Marlowe was born, and at Cambridge University, where he was a student. In the library of his college, Corpus Christi, are the books he would have studied; they are preserved because the books’ 16th-century donor required an annual audit and specified that if more than six large books were missing, the entire collection, along with the college’s silver serving pieces, would be forfeited and given to another college. The result was that the collection is still intact. I also looked at the college’s “buttery books,” the records of the students’ daily purchases of beer and food. These enabled me to track Marlowe’s presence and his mysterious absences.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.