|
Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) is a 1921 series of five plays and a preface by George Bernard Shaw. Year 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ...
George Bernard Shaw (born 26 July 1856, Dublin, Ireland died November 2, 1950, Hertfordshire, England) was an Irish writer. ...
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. Year 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ...
Londons Garrick Theatre was designed by Walter Emden, with CJ Phipps brought in as a consultant to help with the planning on the difficult site, which included an underground river. ...
Plot
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 mortal 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. But, in fact, one of Shaw's last plays, Farfetched Fables Fables (1950) is also an "engagement with science fiction."[citation needed] According to Louis Crompton in Shaw the Dramatist (pp. 252-3): Franco Moretti is an Italian scholar. ...
Terry Eagleton (born in Salford, Lancashire (now Greater Manchester), England, on February 22, 1943) is a British literary critic and philosopher. ...
Michael Holroyd (born August 27, 1935) is a biographer, born in London and educated at Eton College. ...
Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
"The most extensive scholarly treatment of Back to Methuselah is H. M. Geduld's six-volume variorum edition of the play submitted as a doctoral thesis at Birkbeck College, University of London (1961). This thesis, which runs to fourteen hundred pages, includes a discussion of the intellectual and literary background, a collation of some forty editions of the text, annotations to the five parts, preface and postscript, and an account of the theatrical history of the play." Birkbeck, University of London, sometimes referred to by its former name Birkbeck College or by the abbreviation BBK, is a College of the University of London. ...
Copies of this variorum edition are available in the Goldsmiths Library in the University of London, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, and in the Rare Books Collection of the University of Texas at Austin. Indiana University, founded in 1820, is a nine-campus university system in the state of Indiana. ...
Location in the state of Indiana Coordinates: County Monroe Mayor Mark Kruzan Area - City 51. ...
The University of Texas at Austin, often called UT or Texas, is a doctoral/research university located in Austin, Texas. ...
A paraphrase of the following quote from Back to Methuselah is frequently misattributed to Robert F. Kennedy, even though Kennedy stated that he was quoting Shaw: Robert Francis Bobby Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also called RFK, was one of two younger brothers of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and served as United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964. ...
| “ | You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" | ” |
External link - Back to Methuselah at Internet Broadway Database
| The Plays of George Bernard Shaw | 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 | |
Feeds |
Contact