Shakespeare Fellowship President-elect McNeil interviewed in Boston Globe
The Shakespeare Fellowship is in the news again, this time in the form of a Boston Globe interview with the new SF President, Alex McNeil. McNeil is an attorney, court administrator, and television historian, author of the 1,251 page book, Total Television (Penguin, 1996). "Nobody likes to be challenged about core beliefs," says McNeil, 59, who lives in Newton. "But if you try to keep an open mind about it, you find that what is known about Shakespeare of Stratford doesn’t fit with what we should expect of the author of the plays."
"If you start reading the plays, and connecting the dots," continues McNeil, "you conclude that all roads lead to Oxford," he says. "And it’s only with great difficulty that you can surmise those roads lead to the Stratford man."
Don Aucoin’s Globe story notes that McNeil’s dedication to the authorship question "might surprise those who know him only as a mild-mannered TV historian." But when it comes to the authorship question, McNeil is no shrinking violet. He is especially bothered by the prevailing ignorance of the Oxford case in academic circles. "Oxfordians are getting kind of tired of being marginalized," he declares. "The standard reaction in academic circles is ‘These people are nuts. Case closed.’ . . . We’re tired of being pushed around."