Back to Methuselah

Across five linked plays that reach from the Garden of Eden to the year 31,920, Shaw argues that humanity cannot govern its growing civilizations wisely within a lifespan of a few short decades. His remedy is creative evolution: people willing themselves to live for centuries, gaining the patience and foresight that ordinary politics lacks. The cycle opens with Adam and Eve grappling with the invention of death, moves through a satire of postwar British statesmen, then leaps into a strange, cerebral future. Long, ambitious, and openly philosophical, it is Shaw’s fullest statement of his ideas about the Life Force. Written between 1918 and 1920 and published in 1921, it rewards a patient reader. This free PDF and EPUB edition includes all five plays and Shaw’s preface.