A very long play, and not often produced, but the large cast, is also a drawback. It does, however deal with the problem of longevity, and the possible change in a person's goals because of it. It seems a piece for study, and not entertainment, The play was produced in 1922. ( )

One aspect of this edition is typical Shaw. Asked to choose something to be the 500th volume in "The World's Classics" series, he chose this play but added a 'preface' of no less than 283 pages - somewhat longer than the text of the play itself! His preface is a prolonged diatribe against the evils of the day (from Shaw's perspective) under headings such as "The Miracle of Condensed Recapitulation" and "The Humanitarians and the Problem of Evil". All good (and bad) stuff - you can read it on Wikisource. ( )

This play is my favourite Bernard Shaw play next to Pygmalion, and having been written in the early twenties, it not only shows some more maturity in the playwriting, but also explores a topic that was believed to be dead after World War I: the concept of Human Enlightenment.
The concept, popular in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century was that after almost a century of peace that the human race was on the doorstep of a new golden age. After the European wide devastation of the Napoleonic Wars it was believed that we had grown out of our barbarous past where we would constantly war with each other and had come to a point where all of Europe could live at peace. There are a lot of flaws in that belief, particularly since it views the European race as the only race worth mentioning and did not take into account the wars of conquest against our darker skinned brethren. However, this theory collapsed after the beginning of one of the most violent and deadly wars in history, and was then exceeded almost twenty years later with a war that was not only unprecedented in its ferocity and barbarity but also in its global reach.
But back to Bernard Shaw. At the beginning of the 1920's, an era of unprecedented prosperity at the time, Shaw produces this play which in its breadth endeavours to encompass all of human history from the Garden of Eden through to our ascension to godhood. However, this is not a Christian play, far from it. One of its main characters, Lilith, is a Jewish myth about Adam's first wife who refused to be his wife and was thus cursed by God. It was only after Lilith's betrayal that God raised up Eve for Adam. However, this has nothing to do with the play and everything to do with human development.
It is act 2 that is probably the centerpiece of the play. It is set in England in the 1920's where two gentlemen discuss the future of humanity. It is emphasised at the beginning that it does occur shortly after the Great War, and as such this is kept in mind as we move through the play. They are still speaking of the evolution of humanity, and then when we jump into the future in the next scene, we see that this evolution has come about, however it has arrived through the most unlikely of people: the chambermaid (who has not aged over the years that have passed between the acts).
The final scene we see humanity at their apex. They have done away with love, sex, and emotion, and are now purely logical beings. However something is wrong. While they live extra-ordinary long lives they only experience life for three years and then evolve. It appears that despite the desire to evolve, there is also a desire to maintain that which makes us truly us: our emotions. Many sci-fi books and shows treat emotion as something that needs to be done away with, but this undermines something that that God created as an essential part of us: an ability to love, to sing praises, to mourn for a loved one, or to be fuelled in anger at injustice. While our emotions can get carried away at times (and there are quite a few of those times), it is also something to hold onto and cherish as a gift of God. ( )

September 1928 catalogue, 32 pages, at rear of text, first page listing latest volumes , nos. 4813-4846. This issue found its way to the library of the Universidad de Chile, Instituto Pedagogico, in Santiago.

I purchased this abridged version when seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 2000 or 2001 in London. It is one of Shaw's less effective plays, but interesting as a curiosity. ( )