The Voice of The Serpent The Parlor Maid Mrs. Lutestring, the Domestic Minister The Oracle The She-Ancient . THE SERPENT. Yet I do not know how to prevent it. Some day you shall see me come outof this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. THE SERPENT. The Voice in the garden will tell them that theymust not kill, as it tells me. The moment you find we need not last for ever,you talk as if we were going to end today. Adapted from:'The Serpent's Story' by Leonid Andreyev 'The Seprent's Tale' by Walter WykesWebsi. Shall I paint my face and let my arms wasteinto pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh ofkids whose milk you will steal for me? Stay as you are; andI will stay as I am. I donot know what I want, except that I want to be something higher andnobler than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bringme into the world, and whom you despise now that he has served yourturn. That is how; but it is not why. Youthful nurses are provided to tourists to keep that from happening but he has evaded Zozim, the one assigned to him. stronger, happier, freer? There is somethingthat holds us together, something that has no word--. However, counter-measures are not taken because it is realised that any one of them may be long-lived too, but not yet aware of it. Because I hatecreatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distortedand perverted and unnatural. Members of the younger generation, in the persons of Franklyn's daughter Savvy and her sweetheart, a young cleric named Haslam, are at the presentation, too. THE SERPENT. That is how I pay forAbel's blood. [Shaw wrote an extra scene for this part, which he later deleted and then published separately as A Glimpse of the Domesticity of Franklyn Barnabas], The Thing Happens begins in 2170, 150 years after the Barnabas brothers disclosed their inferences, Englishmen continue immature throughout their lives. EVE. Ihave a plan. Next come the ghosts of Eve and Cain, then those of the Serpent and Lilith, mother of mankind. He was not in its judgment because he chose to live God's ways. ADAM. . ADAM. Burge-Lubin considers that impossible and calls Barnabas mad. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, youold vegetable? That is true. You were the one: Adam was theother. Everything must have been created out of nothing. Give it to me; or I willkill you when next I catch you asleep. (5 episodes, 1952) Series Writing Credits George Bernard Shaw . No: he invented it himself. [_He kicks it._]. 2008. He is now a warrior who also kills beasts for food. It hurts. ADAM. Two brothers, one a retired, but influential cleric (Franklyn) and the other a biologist of note (Conrad), independently conclude that humans must increase their lifespans to three centuries in order to acquire the wisdom and experience needed to make complex civilizations functional. THE SERPENT. At the end the Serpent whispersfor Eve's ears alonethe secret of reproduction, which Eve hears with greatly mixed emotions. They cannot renew themselves without Eves. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread. ADAM [_springing up in sudden terror_] Oh! Icannot bear this knowledge. Try a taste of fighting. Lilith Richard Easton. You despise your father; but when he dies the world willbe the richer because he lived. CAIN. The secret. Simple primitive societies, he says, were easily governable while the civilized societies of the twentieth century are so complex that learning to govern them properly can't be accomplished within the human lifespan: People with experience enough to serve the purpose fall into senility and die. I will hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting of mysinews. For it whispers to me that death is not really death:that it is the gate of another life: a life infinitely splendid andintense: a life of the soul alone: a life without clods or spades,hunger or fatigue--. No: they will not kill us: they will feel as I do. It gives us the strength by which we made you and all mankind.Cut off from the clay which you despise, you would perish miserably. Back to Methuselah (Revival, Play, Comedy, Broadway) opened in New York City Mar 26, 1958 and played through Apr 19, 1958. What have you made of yourselves? I have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. ADAM. You imagine what you desire;you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will. No longer arrogant, he asks her for advice. EVE. He rises, stiffens, and falls dead. That is a sweet word. Only,there must be some end, some end: I am not strong enough to beareternity. Oh yes, some of them, of course. My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure. I do not trust the sun. The creations are a man and woman, noble in appearance, beautiful to look at and splendidly attired. The sculptors, Arjillax and Martellus, arrive. ADAM. Martellus apparently brought nothing and Arjillax is jeered because he brought busts of ancients, which the children think are ugly; they want youthful beauties, like themselves. It is I who am to die. I made him out of myown body. After the briefest sort of conversation, the pair leaves together, obviously intending to produce some long-lived children. If I am toeat like a bear, if Lua is to bring forth cubs like a bear, then I hadrather be a bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows nobetter. Back to Methuselah. THE SERPENT. You must. I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the field. I do not want to kill women. Conrad has published their I was the first conqueror. THE SERPENT. You shall notlisten to that snake any more. The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text she inquires and he says "Yes," adding that he is touring these islands for sentimental reasons because, in ancient times, they were the centre of the British Commonwealth. CAIN. EVE [_slowly taking up her distaff_] If you were not a fool you wouldfind something better for both of us to live by than this spinning anddigging. The Garden of Eden. Sheer fabrication, but so pleasing to the voters that he stayed in power for another fifteen years. EVE. Its neck is wrong [_he stoops to lift the neckand shew her_]. The reason for his doing so, as he tells Confucius, is that he doesn't wish to risk contracting rheumatism from exposure to the cold waters of the bay, since he might have to live 300 years, rheumatic. He begs the oracle to respond in the same way she did to his illustrious predecessor, Sir Fuller Eastwind. I, who have so muchin me that I hate and long to cast off! [12] The BBC, in contrast, was able to provide lavish scenery by sheer power of description for its 1958 radio production of the entire play,[13]. THE SERPENT. He has invented tomorrow.You will invent things every day now that the burden of immortality islifted from you. An immense serpent is sleeping withher head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled inapparently endless rings through the branches of a tree, which isalready well grown; for the days of creation have been longer than ourreckoning. This play is getting its first American production since the 1922 world premiere in New York. A fine dream, truly! You are still tempted. Now you no longer care. Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch by Bernard Shaw - Free Ebook Project Gutenberg 70,452 free eBooks 62 by Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch by Bernard Shaw Download This eBook Similar Books Readers also downloaded Bibliographic Record time, Back to Methuselah and Saint Joan. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. She belongs to a colony of long-lived people and has been assigned the task of protecting short-lived visitors. Suppose you were to trip and fall, would you go like that? THE SERPENT. Tell me some miracle that you have done. The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. EVE [_now pitying him maternally_] Love! The secret! And others makelittle mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, andask me to create women for them with such faces. She learns of the Archbishop's longevity with great interest but no evident surprise and it soon emerges that she, also, is long lived and remembers Archbishop Haslam from the time she was parlour maid for Franklyn Barnabas. I will tear.another Adam from my body if I tear my body to pieces in the act. They can remembertheir dreams. And you? Yourhair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself furtherand further. According to Louis Crompton in Shaw the Dramatist (pp. EVE [_slipping her hand into his_] Wife and husband. Adam: we need not livefor ever. He leaves the group and seeks out the Oracle, begs her to let him stay on the island, says he will die of disgust and despair if he goes back home. I have watched thosefaces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown upquite like them. He readily admits repeatedly feigning death and explains that the laws enforcing mandatory retirement at a certain age and those controlling eligibility for pensions left him with no alternative: When his record showed him old enough to be retired, he could no longer keep his job but he was always denied a pension because he looked too young. The state of them that love death more than life. EVE. Andnow some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head andbecome dead. You may die when I have made another Adam. He who has never fought has never lived. _Adam springs to his feet. ADAM [_throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression ofanguish_] Oh no: that is plain without any voice. Listen.I am old. I had not thought of that. EVE. Do you stay and listen to it. You and Adam. CAIN. Kill, kill, kill, kill. When I have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throwit to my woman to cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. All present could attest to the truth of that, with no need for lying! At that point the Minister of Health phones again to tell Burge-Lubin she has changed her mind and invites him to share an amorous adventure aboard her yacht, presently in Fishguard Bay. When she merely lifts her veil he shrieks that he is dying, covers his eyes, and begs her to veil herself again. Rebecca Sunshine performing a monologue 'The Serpent's Tale'. There would be only the things on allfours, and the birds, and the snakes. If I bind the future Ibind my will. It is I. I have come to shew you my beautiful new hood. Only just now youwanted me to sit still and never move lest I should stumble and die likethe fawn. That is whatmakes me sit brooding and silent and hateful. Those whom I slay woulddie if I spared them. I despised myself fornot doing as he did instead of what you did. Bernard Shaw's epic "Back to Methuselah", which was first performed in 1922, has been revived by The Royal Shakespeare Company to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Shaw's death. CAIN. Creative Evolution, translated by Arthur Mitchell, Ph.D. New York: Henry Holt and Company (1911). EVE. [_Trying to pronounce it_] B-birth? Then I will do it. But it does not grow longer for all its practice instreaming, because you have not willed it so. I do not want to eat children. EVE. It said that my deed was as a mark on me, aburnt-in mark such as Abel put on his sheep, that no man should slay me.And here I stand unslain, whilst the cowards who have never slain, themen who are content to be their brothers' keepers instead of theirmasters, are despised and rejected, and slain like rabbits. I will clear themaway tomorrow. 4 myself, I was finding that the surest way to produce an effect of daring innovation and originality was to revive the ancient attraction of long rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to the methods of Molire; What did the Voice say to you when you thought all that? THE SERPENT. It will be a busy day at the nursery: a birth is scheduled followed by the Festival of the Artists. ADAM [_scolding her_] Why do you say that? Without themcourage would have no sense. That is a dreadful thought. Shaw's promotion of Creative Evolution was always wrong, always shallow, and often rather cheap. 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