Motherhood Quote by Richard Le Gallienne

A dagger twist disguised as reassurance: Le Gallienne rewrites Romeo and Juliet as a solvable logistics problem. The line’s wit comes from its breezy modern confidence - “nowadays” - which treats the most famous lovers in English tragedy as if they’ve simply failed at planning, communication, or adult negotiation. Tragedy, he implies, isn’t fate; it’s poor management.

That word “mismanagement” is doing the real work. It smuggles in a late-Victorian/early-modern faith in rationality and social progress, the idea that modern life has upgraded the conditions of love. Where Shakespeare’s Verona is governed by honor culture and family feud, Le Gallienne imagines a world softened by “sensible fathers and mothers,” a new parental class that has learned to prefer happiness over pride. It’s an argument for bourgeois modernity: emotions may still be wild, but the social machinery is supposedly kinder, more negotiable, less murderous.

The subtext is slightly cruel. By insisting “the world is with them,” he erases structural obstacles - class, gender constraints, reputational punishment - and hands responsibility back to the lovers. If they suffer, it’s their fault for not using the tools of their age. That’s both a critique and a cultural self-congratulation: we, the moderns, have outgrown the melodrama.

Le Gallienne is also poking at our appetite for romantic catastrophe. If tragedy can be prevented by sensible parents and competent choices, then maybe what we call “tragic love” is partly a chosen aesthetic - the glamour of self-destruction when ordinary happiness is available.