Summary
Summary of Back to Methuselah
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Longer lives might change human judgment
What if human beings could live for hundreds of years? Bernard Shaw makes that question the thread connecting five plays, moving from the Garden of Eden into the far future. Behind the journey is his belief that people die before they learn enough to govern themselves.
After the First World War, Shaw sees short lives and short thinking as connected dangers. His imagined worlds test whether more time could give people the wisdom their decisions require.
Key idea 2
Adam and Eve weigh their future
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Key idea 3
Cain seeks glory instead of peace
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Key idea 4
The brothers propose time for wisdom
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Key idea 5
Government remains trapped in short thinking
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Key idea 6
Long experience unsettles ordinary visitors
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Key idea 7
Humanity is a stage of growth
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Key idea 8
Judge society by its lasting growth
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love plays of ideas, Shaw's wit, and big questions about evolution and humanity's future.
What this book is
Back to Methuselah is a cycle of five connected plays by Bernard Shaw, published in 1921 and first staged in New York in 1922. Shaw called it a metabiological pentateuch, a five-part scripture of life. It begins in the Garden of Eden and reaches into the far future, and it asks one large question. What if human beings could live for hundreds of years?
Shaw wrote it after the First World War, when he believed that short lives and short thinking had brought Europe to ruin. He argues that people die before they have learned enough to govern themselves. The plays follow that idea through time, from the first couple to politicians in modern England and on to a world of beings who have outgrown us. You get talk, jokes, argument and a few strange scenes, all driven by one hope. Let us turn first to the garden, where fear of death is born.
In this summary
- 1Eden begins with fear and wonderFree
- 2Cain shows how short lives breed violence
- 3Two brothers and a daring theory
- 4Politicians meet a stranger future
- 5Long-livers and the people who consult them
- 6What Shaw really wants to say
Key point 1 of 6
Eden begins with fear and wonder
The first play is called In the Beginning. Adam and Eve live in a garden where nothing is hard, and Adam is already uneasy. He has seen a fawn die, and he does not understand what has happened. Eve is troubled too, because she senses that living forever may be a burden as much as a gift.
Then the Serpent appears, and Shaw makes it a figure of curiosity and imagination. It tells Eve a secret about how new life is made, so that the world need not stay as it is. The idea of birth dazzles her. It also opens the idea of death, since a world with newcomers must make room for them.
Adam and Eve begin to talk about how long they would want to live. Shaw has them reason like people weighing a bargain. Endless life sounds wonderful until they picture endless tedium, and then a limit starts to look like mercy.
This opening sets the plan for the whole cycle. Shaw wants you to see life as something that is made and remade by will and desire, and not as a fixed gift. The first couple choose a span of life for themselves, and later plays ask whether that choice was wise.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
Why do the Barnabas brothers want people to live longer?
Right. “A man who lives so long would have time to learn, to undo his mistakes, and to see the results of his own decisions.”Not quite. “A man who lives so long would have time to learn, to undo his mistakes, and to see the results of his own decisions.”
What separates Cain's desires from Adam's?
Right. “Cain is drawn to killing and to the glory of it.”Not quite. “Cain is drawn to killing and to the glory of it.”
What does Shaw mean by the Life Force?
Right. “Shaw believed that evolution is not blind but driven by a force he called the Life Force, which strives to become more capable.”Not quite. “Shaw believed that evolution is not blind but driven by a force he called the Life Force, which strives to become more capable.”
Questions about Back to Methuselah
What is Back to Methuselah about?
It is a cycle of five plays that asks what would happen if humans lived for centuries. Shaw follows the idea from Eden through modern politics to a far future, arguing that longer life might make people wiser.
When was Back to Methuselah written and first staged?
Shaw published it in 1921 and it was first staged in New York in 1922. He wrote it in the aftermath of the First World War, when he was deeply troubled by the folly of European politics.
What does creative evolution mean in Shaw's play?
It is the idea that life changes through will and purpose rather than blind chance. Shaw believed a driving force in nature strives toward greater ability, and the plays dramatize that belief.
Is Back to Methuselah hard to read?
Shaw's humor and clear arguments help, and each of the five plays can be enjoyed on its own terms.
Why is it called Back to Methuselah?
Methuselah is the biblical figure said to have lived 969 years. The title points to Shaw's hope that humanity might return to such long lives, using them to learn and govern itself better.
