The Free-Thinkers
3. Character Assassination
Kyd's assessment of Marlowe's character has been accepted by most scholars, who see it as confirmation of the malignant report of the Star Chamber informer, Richard Baines; yet we know from considerable documentary evidence that the statements of informers are the last pieces of evidence to be trusted. Over the centuries their stock-in-trade has hardly changed, specialising in false accusations of blasphemy and especially sexual depravity of every kind, including buggery (even with animals as charged against Mohammed by Christian accusers in the 16th century), sodomy, incest and pederasty (charges also brought against the Jews by the Gestapo).
Marlowe, in common with such great men as Solzhenitsyn, was the victim of a police state, and the charges of Baines and Kyd (who may in part be reflecting what had been impressed on his mind by torture) are as much to be believed as the charges made by the Gestapo and the KGB.
The charges are quite clearly lies, and in Marlowe's case they are contradicted by all that his friends and admirers said of him, calling him "the Muse's darling", "the man that hath been dear unto us", "that pure elemental wit, Christopher Marlowe", "kind Kit Marlowe", and even from his envious rivals, "Thou famous gracer of Tragedians", acknowledging him as England's premier poet-dramatist in 1592, just before the tragedy at Deptford overwhelmed his reputation.
It is the policy of the Marlowe Society to work towards lifting this cloud of infamy from his unjustly blemished name and restoring Christopher Marlowe to the position of honour his genius deserves. After four hundred years it is time that credit is given where it is due.
Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), circa 1590.
Raleigh led the group of Free-Thinkers nicknamed 'The School of Night', that included Marlowe, Thomas Hariot, and the 'Wizard Earl', Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland.