Marlowe lived quickly and died at twenty-nine, leaving behind plays that feel as combustible as the rumours that surrounded him. Scholar, dramatist, and almost certainly government agent, he understood risk.

And accepted it – welcomed it, even.

In Doctor Faustus, the fall of Icarus becomes a warning written in blank verse.

Marlowe’s heroes do not drift into error; they reach for it. They test the limits of knowledge, power, and desire – and discover that ambition is rarely neutral.

He wrote about overreaching with unusual authority. Whether in life or art, Marlowe seemed fascinated by what happens when the human will pushes beyond its allotted bounds.

Over to you: which writers (or celebrities) do you think lived too fast and died too young?

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Reading makes us see what we’ve stopped noticing.