Arthur Wing Pinero

Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English playwright who began his career as an actor, and became one of the dominant figures of the late-Victorian and Edwardian London stage. He is best remembered for farces and society dramas including The Magistrate, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ and The Gay Lord Quex; he was knighted in 1909. The Princess and the Butterfly (1897), the source of this line, is one of his comedies of manners — a play built around the fear of turning forty.