Collected Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

has been performed a few times in Scotland by Mr Esme Percy, who led one of the forlorn hopes of the advanced drama at that time. Also I supplied the published work with an imposing framework consisting of a preface, an appendix called The Revolutionist's Handbook, and a final display of aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous, apparently, that nobody noticed the new religion in the centre of the intellectual whirlpool. Now I protest I did not cut these cerebral capers in mere inconsiderate exuberance. I did it because the worst convention of the criticism of the theatre current at that time was that intellectual seriousness is out of place on the stage; that the theatre is a place of shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed after the enormous intellectual strain of a day in the city: in short, that a playwright is a person whose business it is to make unwholesome confectionery out of cheap emotions. My answer to this was to put all my intellectual goods in the shop window under the sign of Man and Superman. That part of my design succeeded. By good luck and acting, the comedy triumphed on the stage; and the book was a good deal discussed. Since then the sweet-shop view of the theatre has been out of countenance; and its critical exponents have been driven to take an intellectual pose which, though often more trying than their old intellectually nihilistic vulgarity, at least concedes the dignity of the theatre, not to mention the usefulness of those who live by criticizing it. And the younger playwrights are not only taking their art seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who ought to be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.

      I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of the philosopher's stone which enables men to live for ever. I am not, I hope, under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity of this my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the best I can at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for those who found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is my hope that a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands will soon leave mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the fifteenth century left behind the first attempts of the early Christians at iconography. In that hope I withdraw and ring up the curtain.

      BACK TO METHUSELAH.

      PART I—In the Beginning

      ACT I

      The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent is sleeping with her head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled in apparently endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is already well grown; for the days of creation have been longer than our reckoning. She is not yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as her colors of green and brown make a perfect camouflage. Near her head a low rock shows above the Johnswort.

      The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the rock, is staring in consternation at the dead body. He has not noticed the serpent on his left hand. He turns his face to his right and calls excitedly.

      ADAM. Eve! Eve!

      EVE'S VOICE. What is it, Adam?

      ADAM. Come here. Quick. Something has happened.

      EVE [running in] What? Where? [Adam points to the fawn]. Oh! [She goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her]. What is the matter with its eyes?

      ADAM. It is not only its eyes. Look. [He kicks it.]

      EVE. Oh don't! Why doesn't it wake?

      ADAM. I don't know. It is not asleep.

      EVE. Not asleep?

      ADAM. Try.

      EVE [trying to shake it and roll it over] It is stiff and cold.

      ADAM. Nothing will wake it.

      EVE. It has a queer smell. Pah! [She dusts her hands, and draws away from it]. Did you find it like that?

      ADAM. No. It was playing about; and it tripped and went head over heels. It never stirred again. Its neck is wrong [he stoops to lift the neck and shew her].

      EVE. Dont touch it. Come away from it.

      They both retreat, and contemplate it from a few steps' distance with growing repulsion.

      EVE. Adam.

      ADAM. Yes?

      EVE. Suppose you were to trip and fall, would you go like that?

      ADAM. Ugh! [He shudders and sits down on the rock].

      EVE [throwing herself on the ground beside him, and grasping his knee] You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful.

      ADAM. What is the good of being careful? We have to live here for ever. Think of what for ever means! Sooner or later I shall trip and fall. It may be tomorrow; it may be after as many days as there are leaves in the garden and grains of sand by the river. No matter: some day I shall forget and stumble.

      EVE. I too.

      ADAM [horrified] Oh no, no. I should be alone. Alone for ever. You must never put yourself in danger of stumbling. You must not move about. You must sit still. I will take care of you and bring you what you want.

      EVE [turning away from him with a shrug, and hugging her ankles] I should soon get tired of that. Besides, if it happened to you, I should be alone. I could not sit still then. And at last it would happen to me too.

      ADAM. And then?

      EVE. Then we should be no more. There would be only the things on all fours, and the birds, and the snakes.

      ADAM. That must not be.

      EVE. Yes: that must not be. But it might be.

      ADAM. No. I tell you it must not be. I know that it must not be.

      EVE. We both know it. How do we know it?

      ADAM. There is a voice in the garden that tells me things.

      EVE. The garden is full of voices sometimes. They put all sorts of thoughts into my head.

      ADAM. To me there is only one voice. It is very low; but it is so near that it is like a whisper from within myself. There is no mistaking it for any voice of the birds or beasts, or for your voice.

      EVE. It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only one from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and not from the voices. The thought that we must not cease to be comes from within.

      ADAM [despairingly] But we shall cease to be. We shall fall like the fawn and be broken. [Rising and moving about in his agitation]. I cannot bear this knowledge. I will not have it. It must not be, I tell you. Yet I do not know how to prevent it.

      EVE. That is just what I feel; but it is very strange that you should say so: there is no pleasing you. You change your mind so often.

      ADAM [scolding her] Why do you say that? How have I changed my mind?

      EVE. You say we must not cease to exist. But you used to complain of having to exist always and for ever. You sometimes sit for hours brooding and silent, hating me in your heart. When I ask you what I have done to you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of having to be here for ever. But I know very well that what you mean is the horror of having to be here with me for ever.

      ADAM. Oh! That is what you think, is it? Well, you are wrong. [He sits down again, sulkily]. It is the horror of having to be with myself for ever. I like you; but I do not like myself.