McLuhan Misquote

I'm so glad that some one else has caught him doing it. I documented a number of instances in "Proxemics and Prosthetics".

"But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?/It speaks, and yet says nothing." An apt description of TV, Marshall McLuhan said, when he quoted Shakespeare in Understanding Media. Romeo's line is in fact "She speaks, yet she says nothing," and refers to Juliet, who is likened to light —— and it actually occurs in the play ten lines after the first.

from the issue devoted to "Means of Communication" Lapham's Quarterly Volume V, Number 2 p. 205.

Certainly lots more to keep editors of a critical edition of his works quite busy.

And so for day 276
16.09.2007