Back to Methuselah
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Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) is a 1921 series of five plays and a preface by George Bernard Shaw.
The five plays are:
- In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden)
- The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day
- The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170
- Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000
- As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920
The plays were published with a preface titled The Infidel Half Century, and first performed in 1922 by the New York Theatre Guild at the Garrick Theatre.
The plays concern themselves with immortality. Briefly, Adam and Eve lose immortality in the first play, in the second the Brothers Barnabas decide to live for more than 200 years, in the third everybody begins to live much longer. In Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman we see an ordinary non-immortal meeting the immortals in Ireland, where a group of venal politicians have come to seek advice from an oracle, and in As Far as Thought Can Reach life gives up the material plane altogether.
Though out of fashion now (Franco Moretti described the series as ‘perhaps the biggest piece of trash in universal literature’ and Terry Eagleton agrees with him), the plays described by Michael Holroyd as 'a masterpiece of wishful thinking' represents Shaw's only real engagement with science fiction.
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| The Plays of George Bernard Shaw |
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| Plays Unpleasant : The Philanderer, Mrs Warren's Profession, Widowers' Houses Plays Pleasant : Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, You Never Can Tell Three Plays for Puritans : Caesar and Cleopatra, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, The Devil's Disciple Back to Methuselah, a cycle of 5 plays : In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920 Other Plays : Androcles and the Lion, The Apple Cart, The Doctor's Dilemma, Fanny's First Play, Geneva, Heartbreak House, John Bull's Other Island, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Misalliance, Pygmalion, Saint Joan |
