Talk:Back to Methuselah

WikiProject Theatre Assessment

• Stub class - The info under the "plot" heading should probably be split between "Analysis" and "Reception" headings. A play infobox is needed, as well as an actual plot synopsis.
• low importance - A single play constitutes a "highly specific area of knowledge".

--Dereksmootz (talk) 00:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Projected change

I plan to remove the following paragraphs because they add little to an understanding of the work. If you see something that should be retained, please let me know—

Though out of fashion now (Franco Moretti described the series as "perhaps the biggest piece of trash in universal literature" and Terry Eagleton agrees with him), the plays described by Michael Holroyd as "a masterpiece of wishful thinking" represents Shaw's only real engagement with science fiction. However, one of Shaw's last plays, Farfetched Fables (1950) is also science fiction.[6]

According to Louis Crompton in Shaw the Dramatist (pp. 252-3):[7]

The most extensive scholarly treatment of Back to Methuselah is H. M. Geduld's six-volume variorum edition of the play submitted as a doctoral thesis at Birkbeck College, University of London (1961). This thesis, which runs to fourteen hundred pages, includes a discussion of the intellectual and literary background, a collation of some forty editions of the text, annotations to the five parts, preface and postscript, and an account of the theatrical history of the play."

Copies of this variorum edition are available in the Goldsmiths Library in the University of London, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, and in the Rare Books Collection of the University of Texas at Austin.

Wugo (talk) 20:26, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the citations of reviews by Moretti and Eagleton because I cannot verify them. I found other reviewers opinions that I could replace them with, but see no reason to do so. In the main, reviewers liked the plays, but what difference does that make? Wugo (talk) 21:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Feedback

I have requested feedback at Wikipedia:Requests for Feedback and at Wikipedia:WikiProject Theatre/Assessment for guidance in further additions to this article.Wugo (talk) 19:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• "Both concepts had some currency among Shaw's contemporaries ... Although these ideas are out of scientific favor as the twenty-first century begins, Shaw accepted them completely." - Were they ever in scientific favour? I mean, arguably during Lamarck's popularity, but not after Darwin, surely. Also, Shaw's an English writer, so use the British spellings.
• Citations needed throughout.
• "Welchmen" - Is this Shaw's spelling? It's a bit archaic - the standard modern spelling is Welshmen.

I've fixed the formatting. I think that it'll probably need some more work on literary analysis, history, place in Shaw's oeuvre, and the legacy of these plays on others, which will mean finding some more sources. It also needs to answer questions such as "What led Shaw to write this?"

Prose needs a lot of work, it's written a bit too simplisticly, more appropriate for use in a Simple English Wikipedia version than the main English encyclopaedia (though I would consider copying it over there).

Actually, this would be an excellent article for the simple English Wikipedia. However, for here, I think that a lot more depth of coverage is going to be needed, and making the text sound more academic.Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Copied from Requests for Feedback:

Comments I just made several changes, and EC'd you (diff). So here goes

• The lead is short, and I turned that listy opening into prose, so you may want to expand it.
• The summaries of each plays' section are getting quite long and you may want to look into sub-articles. I would leave individual infoboxes to if you created those sub-articles.
• You should also start wikifying the synopses as it is light on links.
• You may also want to use WP:Citation templates or the Make ref tool to format your citations in a more consistent style.

• Wikipedia links are not references, you can link to wikisource for material, but that is different.

That's it for now and it is a good start. Let me know if you need some clarification from me. -Optigan13 (talk) 01:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Why Shaw liked Lamarck

The play claims that Shaw's fascination for Lamarckism derives from admiration from Stalin, who was also fascinated by Lamarck. This is chronological nonsense; Stalin was virtually unknown when Shaw wrote the play and certainly nobody knew about Stalin's opinions of biology, if he even had them at the time.

The real basis for Shaw's admiration of Lamarck was philosophical. Lamarck claimed that an organism could direct its own evolution, which fit in with Shaw's reformist political ideals. Shaw thought "survival of the fittest" was a repulsive doctrine that glorified callous behavior. He backed the wrong theory, of course, but he made his reasons clear, and they had nothing to do with hero-worshipping Stalin. CharlesTheBold (talk) 01:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Clarification(s)? (for the Thing Happens section)

• I have read this sentence from the article several times and I am still not sure what it means:

"The Archbishop is recognizably the Reverend Haslam, Savvy Barnabas' sweetheart, no longer callow, but dignified and confident and looking no more than fifty. " Could someone clarify? why is Savvy capitalized? (is it a name?); does Barnabas have a "sweetheart" who is a man and also the Archbishop? And who was callow, Barnabas or his sweetheart? and when were they callow, was this previously explained? It might be simpler by making it into shorter, declarative sentences, with fewer clauses referring to other things that are not obvious. thanks! --Mdukas (talk) 19:48, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

• "After the briefest sort of conversation, the pair leaves together...", which pair? there are several people on stage, maybe we can guess it is the archibishop and the maid/minister, but why should we guess who is meant by "the pair"? --Mdukas (talk) 19:51, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Production History

• Have there been no productions in the last 50 years anywhere? --Mdukas (talk) 20:08, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Assessment for Theatre

• i would think that (C / low) is still an appropriate rating as of today. --Mdukas (talk) 20:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

No mention of Schopenhauer?

Although the current commentary on Lamarkism (etc.) is entirely apt, the text of what Shaw himself considered his masterpiece is also full of very obvious references to Arthur Schopenhauer --i.e., he attempts to wax philosophic on the Will in obviously derivative terms at various points throughout. It was many years ago that I read both the primary source text and various secondary sources --but, I think, at least one brief statement and citation on these lines would befit the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.74.196.236 (talk) 01:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)