In The Beginning B C 4004 In The Garden Of Eden

'In the Beginning: B.C. 4004' is an allegorical play by Nobel Prize winning author George Bernard Shaw. Adam and Eve, as avatars for aboriginal humanity, discover a fawn dead from a broken neck and realize they, too, will die eventually from some mishap, even though they are immune to aging. Their dread of death is overwhelmed by the yet more dreadful prospect of life unending, with its tedium and burdens, but they feel bound to live forever because Eden must be taken care of and they are the only ones available to do it. The solution, at least in the book, will come from the Serpent's suggestion...The play is part of the collection titled, "Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch)"

Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface (An Infidel Half Century) and a series of five 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, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920. All were written during 1918-20, published simultaneously by Constable (London) and Brentano's (New York) in 1921, and first performed in the United States in 1922 by the New York Theatre Guild at the old Garrick Theatre, New York and, in Britain, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1923.

Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) is a 1921 series of five plays and a preface by George Bernard Shaw. 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.

One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a small boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered an elderly man, weighty and solemn,