# Back to Methuselah: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> George Bernard Shaw. 77 speaking roles, 69,551 words, about 497 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/back-to-methuselah
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**The Elderly Gentleman** has the most to say in Back to Methuselah: about 827 lines and 7,308 words, 10.5% of the play. Back to Methuselah is Shaw’s five-part cycle about human longevity, running from the Garden of Eden into the far future. With 77 speaking roles, no part holds more than about a tenth of the words. The Elderly Gentleman is the largest, all in Part 4, and Eve speaks at the very start and returns at the end.

- Speaking roles: 77
- Scenes: 8
- Words: 69,551
- Speech time: 497 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Elderly Gentleman | 827 | 7,308 | 10.5% | 52.2 | 3 |
| Zoo | 506 | 4,408 | 6.3% | 31.5 | 3 |
| Franklyn | 442 | 3,879 | 5.6% | 27.7 | 1 |
| Eve | 442 | 3,819 | 5.5% | 27.3 | 3 |
| Lubin | 433 | 3,810 | 5.5% | 27.2 | 1 |
| Burge-Lubin | 442 | 3,600 | 5.2% | 25.7 | 1 |
| Burge | 377 | 3,200 | 4.6% | 22.9 | 1 |
| The Archbishop | 286 | 2,540 | 3.7% | 18.1 | 1 |
| Confucius | 303 | 2,521 | 3.6% | 18.0 | 1 |
| Cain | 256 | 2,374 | 3.4% | 17.0 | 2 |
| Adam | 275 | 2,225 | 3.2% | 15.9 | 3 |
| Pygmalion | 240 | 2,193 | 3.2% | 15.7 | 1 |
| Conrad | 228 | 1,791 | 2.6% | 12.8 | 1 |
| The She-Ancient | 199 | 1,719 | 2.5% | 12.3 | 1 |
| The Serpent | 211 | 1,715 | 2.5% | 12.3 | 2 |
| Mrs. Lutestring | 190 | 1,704 | 2.5% | 12.2 | 1 |
| Napoleon | 181 | 1,644 | 2.4% | 11.7 | 1 |
| The Envoy | 173 | 1,521 | 2.2% | 10.9 | 2 |
| Barnabas | 194 | 1,501 | 2.2% | 10.7 | 1 |
| Acis | 171 | 1,396 | 2% | 10.0 | 1 |
| Martellus | 152 | 1,309 | 1.9% | 9.4 | 1 |
| The Maiden | 142 | 1,257 | 1.8% | 9.0 | 1 |
| Arjillax | 158 | 1,256 | 1.8% | 9.0 | 1 |
| The He-Ancient | 139 | 1,124 | 1.6% | 8.0 | 1 |
| Ecrasia | 141 | 1,063 | 1.5% | 7.6 | 1 |
| Savvy | 115 | 887 | 1.3% | 6.3 | 1 |
| The Woman | 91 | 742 | 1.1% | 5.3 | 1 |
| The Newly Born | 109 | 734 | 1.1% | 5.2 | 1 |
| Lilith | 72 | 718 | 1% | 5.1 | 1 |
| Haslam | 86 | 638 | 0.9% | 4.6 | 1 |
| The Oracle | 76 | 573 | 0.8% | 4.1 | 2 |
| Strephon | 78 | 558 | 0.8% | 4.0 | 1 |
| The Male Figure | 51 | 445 | 0.6% | 3.2 | 1 |
| The Man | 55 | 424 | 0.6% | 3.0 | 1 |
| Zozim | 51 | 401 | 0.6% | 2.9 | 1 |
| The Ancient | 39 | 337 | 0.5% | 2.4 | 1 |
| The Youth | 42 | 327 | 0.5% | 2.3 | 1 |
| The Female Figure | 40 | 323 | 0.5% | 2.3 | 1 |
| The Parlor Maid | 34 | 244 | 0.4% | 1.7 | 1 |
| The Negress | 30 | 243 | 0.3% | 1.7 | 1 |
| The Veiled Woman | 16 | 151 | 0.2% | 1.1 | 1 |
| The Wife | 15 | 95 | 0.1% | 0.7 | 2 |
| The Clerical Gentleman | 11 | 87 | 0.1% | 0.6 | 1 |
| The Daughter | 12 | 81 | 0.1% | 0.6 | 2 |
| Another Youth | 10 | 63 | 0.1% | 0.5 | 1 |
| The Envoy’s Daughter | 6 | 58 | 0.1% | 0.4 | 1 |
| The Tweeded Gentleman | 7 | 42 | 0.1% | 0.3 | 1 |
| The Envoy’s Wife | 6 | 38 | 0.1% | 0.3 | 2 |
| A Voice | 4 | 31 | 0% | 0.2 | 1 |
| A Maiden | 5 | 29 | 0% | 0.2 | 1 |
| The Temple Youth | 3 | 29 | 0% | 0.2 | 1 |
| The Voice | 3 | 29 | 0% | 0.2 | 1 |
| Voices In The Temple | 3 | 29 | 0% | 0.2 | 1 |
| The Snake | 3 | 27 | 0% | 0.2 | 1 |
| His Daughter | 2 | 20 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| The Authoritative Nymph | 2 | 20 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| A Girl’s Voice From The Egg | 2 | 16 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| The Egg | 2 | 16 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| A Youth | 3 | 15 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Incredulous Voices | 2 | 14 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Another Maiden | 2 | 12 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| A Woman’s Voice | 4 | 10 | 0% | 0.1 | 2 |
| All The Young | 3 | 10 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| The Tunic Bearer | 1 | 10 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Confucius’s Voice | 2 | 9 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Several Youths | 1 | 9 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Several Young People | 1 | 8 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| The Woman’s Voice | 1 | 8 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| The Gentleman | 1 | 7 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| On All Hands | 1 | 6 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Simple-Lifer | 1 | 6 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Eve’s Voice | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Young Woman | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| A Chinese Voice | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| The Negress’s Voice | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| A Man’s Voice | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Adam’s Voice | 1 | 1 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## Who speaks in which scene

Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: 1.1 = Part 1, Act 1; 1.2 = Part 1, Act 2; Pt 2 = Part 2; Pt 3 = Part 3; 4.1 = Part 4, Act 1; 4.2 = Part 4, Act 2; 4.3 = Part 4, Act 3; Pt 5 = Part 5.

- **The Elderly Gentleman**: 4.1 (5,635), 4.2 (1,188), 4.3 (485)
- **Zoo**: 4.1 (3,494), 4.2 (513), 4.3 (401)
- **Franklyn**: Pt 2 (3,879)
- **Eve**: 1.1 (1,426), 1.2 (2,312), Pt 5 (81)
- **Lubin**: Pt 2 (3,810)
- **Burge-Lubin**: Pt 3 (3,600)
- **Burge**: Pt 2 (3,200)
- **The Archbishop**: Pt 3 (2,540)
- **Confucius**: Pt 3 (2,521)
- **Cain**: 1.2 (2,297), Pt 5 (77)
- **Adam**: 1.1 (1,368), 1.2 (746), Pt 5 (111)
- **Pygmalion**: Pt 5 (2,193)
- **Conrad**: Pt 2 (1,791)
- **The She-Ancient**: Pt 5 (1,719)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Elderly Gentleman: “Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of one another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which statesmen from all over the earth come to consult English sages who speak with the experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land that once exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but wisdom. You see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the weekend riverside hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the sands of the Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindu Kush. Can you wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery and beauty of these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic past, made holy by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an emerald gem set in a silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious British race, ever forget that when the Empire transferred its seat to the East, and said to the turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed but never conquered, “At last we leave you to yourselves; and much good may it do you,” the Irish as one man uttered the historic shout “No: we’ll be damned if you do,” and emigrated to the countries where there was still a Nationalist question, to India, Persia, and Korea, to Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these countries they were ever foremost in the struggle for national independence; and the world rang continually with the story of their sufferings and wrongs. And what poem can do justice to the end, when it came at last? Hardly two hundred years had elapsed when the claims of nationality were so universally conceded that there was no longer a single country on the face of the earth with a national grievance or a national movement. Think of the position of the Irish, who had lost all their political faculties by disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and who owed their position as the most interesting race on earth solely to their sufferings! The very countries they had helped to set free boycotted them as intolerable bores. The communities which had once idolized them as the incarnation of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain, fled from them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the Irish claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city and redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these devoted Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled by an English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their own country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was nothing to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the suggestion. They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground. When they reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves down and passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young to embrace the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young looked gloomily on, and said “There is no earth, only stone.” You will see by looking round you why they said that: the fields here are of stone: the hills are capped with granite. They all left for England next day; and no Irishman ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his own children; so that when that generation passed away the Irish race vanished from human knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest they should be sent back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of its Jews and its Irish, has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos for you in this story? Can you not understand now why I am come to visit the scene of this tragic effacement of a race of heroes and poets?” | Part 4, Act 1 | 711 | 72 |
| Lilith: “They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction. Their breasts are without milk: their bowels are gone: the very shapes of them are only ornaments for their children to admire and caress without understanding. Is this enough; or shall I labor again? Shall I bring forth something that will sweep them away and make an end of them as they have swept away the beasts of the garden, and made an end of the crawling things and the flying things and of all them that refuse to live forever? I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness of the things I had made: Mars blushed as he looked down on the shame of his sister planet: cruelty and hypocrisy became so hideous that the face of the earth was pitted with the graves of little children among which living skeletons crawled in search of horrible food. The pangs of another birth were already upon me when one man repented and lived three hundred years; and I waited to see what would come of that. And so much came of it that the horrors of that time seem now but an evil dream. They have redeemed themselves from their vileness, and turned away from their sins. Best of all, they are still not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that day when I sundered myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the earth still urges them: after passing a million goals they press on to the goal of redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a whirlpool in pure force. And though all that they have done seems but the first hour of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not supersede them until they have forded this last stream that lies between flesh and spirit, and disentangled their life from the matter that has always mocked it. I can wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the eternal. I gave the woman the greatest of gifts: curiosity. By that her seed has been saved from my wrath; for I also am curious; and I have waited always to see what they will do tomorrow. Let them feed that appetite well for me. I say, let them dread, of all things, stagnation; for from the moment I, Lilith, lose hope and faith in them, they are doomed. In that hope and faith I have let them live for a moment; and in that moment I have spared them many times. But mightier creatures than they have killed hope and faith, and perished from the earth; and I may not spare them forever. I am Lilith: I brought life into the whirlpool of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a living soul. But in enslaving Life’s enemy I made him Life’s master; for that is the end of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and the enemy reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And because these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out towards that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well that when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me, and Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond.” | Part 5 | 679 | 68 |
| Eve: “Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit down and be quiet; and listen to me. I hardly know which of you satisfies me least, you with your dirty digging, or he with his dirty killing. I cannot think it was for either of these cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. You dig roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down a divine sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his food; and makes up idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his terror-ridden life with fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine clothes, so that men may glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as murderer and thief. All you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my sons’ sons, or my sons’ sons’ sons: you all come to see me: you all show off before me: all your little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted out before mother Eve. The diggers come: the fighters and killers come: they are both very dull; for they either complain to me of the last harvest, or boast to me of the last fight; and one harvest is just like another, and the last fight only a repetition of the first. Oh, I have heard it all a thousand times. They tell me too of their last-born: the clever thing the darling child said yesterday, and how much more wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any child that ever was born before. And I have to pretend to be surprised, delighted, interested; though the last child is like the first, and has said and done nothing that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel said it. For you were the first children in the world, and filled us with such wonder and delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world lasts. When I can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass of nettles and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to. But you have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is dead: I never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam saying the same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit from the last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress me with his importance. Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly seven hundred years of it to endure.” | Part 1, Act 2 | 428 | 43 |
| The Elderly Gentleman: “I have the utmost respect, madam, for the magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask you to worship me on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study these things, and to invent instruments and apparatus for research. But what is the consequence? Their discoveries discredit the simple stories of our religion. At first we had no idea of astronomical space. We believed the sky to be only the ceiling of a room as large as the earth, with another room on top of it. Death was to us a going upstairs into that room, or, if we did not obey the priests, going downstairs into the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our morality, our laws, our lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple belief. Well, the moment men became astronomers and made telescopes, their belief perished. When they could no longer believe in the sky, they found that they could no longer believe in their Deity, because they had always thought of him as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to believe in their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed their name and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of science. They set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only wonders and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the wonder workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the Deity, men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and worshipped the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples for his telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with microscopes, and found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in, but millions of microorganisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at the millions of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible sacrifices were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed by the microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as infallible and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our wisdom, only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant you is that they increased our knowledge.” | Part 4, Act 1 | 428 | 43 |
| Eve: “Of the coming true of your dreams and mine. Of newly created things. Of better things. My sons and my son’s sons are not all diggers and fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more useless than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are vain; yet they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their hair. They borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want, because they tell beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember their dreams. They can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough to create instead of dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it. There are others who cut reeds of different lengths and blow through them, making lovely patterns of sound in the air; and some of them can weave the patterns together, sounding three reeds at the same time, and raising my soul to things for which I have no words. And others make little mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, and ask me to create women for them with such faces. I have watched those faces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown up quite like them. And others think of numbers without having to count on their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and give names to the stars, and can foretell when the sun will be covered with a black saucepan lid. And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me which has saved me so much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the hills, and hears the Voice continually, and has given up his will to do the will of the Voice, and has some of the Voice’s greatness. When they come, there is always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live for. They never want to die, because they are always learning and always creating either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then you, Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid, and that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of death makes life worth living. Away with you, naughty child; and do you, Adam, go on with your work and not waste your time listening to him.” | Part 1, Act 2 | 421 | 43 |
| Cain: “Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did I? No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug and dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost him a day’s glorious health-giving sport and an hour’s amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do the same. I envied his happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for not doing as he did instead of what you did. He became so happy that he shared his meal with the Voice that had whispered all his inventions to him. He said that the Voice was the voice of the fire that cooked his food, and that the fire that could cook could also eat. It was true: I saw the fire consume the food on his altar. Then I, too, made an altar, and offered my food on it, my grains, my roots, my fruit. Useless: nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then came my great idea: why not kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck; and he died, just as they did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging ways, and lived as he had lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the fire. Am I not better than you? stronger, happier, freer?” | Part 1, Act 2 | 330 | 33 |
| The Envoy: “Well, about this colonizing plan of yours. My father-in-law here has been telling me something about it; and he has just now let out that you want not only to colonize us, but to—to—to—well, shall we say to supersede us? Now why supersede us? Why not live and let live? Theres not a scrap of ill-feeling on our side. We should welcome a colony of immortals—we may almost call you that—in the British Middle East. No doubt the Turanian Empire, with its Muhammadan traditions, overshadows us now. We have had to bring the Emperor with us on this expedition, though of course you know as well as I do that he has imposed himself on my party just to spy on me. I don’t deny that he has the whip hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of our generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game: he is the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and an autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British democracy. Not that our British democrats won’t fight: they will fight the heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so long to work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march. But you people would never get on with him. Believe me, you would not be as comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We like you. We are easygoing people; and we are rich people. That will appeal to you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of it is desert. They don’t irrigate as we do. Besides—now I am sure this will appeal to you and to all right-minded men—we are Christians.” | Part 4, Act 2 | 315 | 32 |
| Franklyn: “That is only the first step of the Fall. Adam did not fall down that step only: he fell down a whole flight. For instance, before he invented birth he dared not have lost his temper; for if he had killed Eve he would have been lonely and barren to all eternity. But when he invented birth, and anyone who was killed could be replaced, he could afford to let himself go. He undoubtedly invented wife-beating; and that was another step down. One of his sons invented meat-eating. The other was horrified at the innovation. With the ferocity which is still characteristic of bulls and other vegetarians, he slew his beefsteak-eating brother, and thus invented murder. That was a very steep step. It was so exciting that all the others began to kill one another for sport, and thus invented war, the steepest step of all. They even took to killing animals as a means of killing time, and then, of course, ate them to save the long and difficult labor of agriculture. I ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came crashing down all the steps of this Jacob’s ladder that reached from paradise to a hell on earth in which they had multiplied the chances of death from violence, accident, and disease until they could hardly count on three score and ten years of life, much less the thousand that Adam had been ready to face! With that picture before you, will you now ask me where was the Fall? You might as well stand at the foot of Snowdon and ask me where is the mountain. The very children see it so plainly that they compress its history into a two line epic:” | Part 2 | 305 | 31 |
| Eve: “What! You dare come here boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the worst of wives! You her master! You are more her slave than Adam’s ox or your own sheepdog. Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk of your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains! Ha! Poor wretch: do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that? Do you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the blue fox to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an animal than a woman? When you have to snare the little tender birds because it is too much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of a great warrior do you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your life; but who gets the striped skin you have run that risk for? She takes it to lie on, and flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You fight because you think that your fighting makes her admire and desire you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. You say that I make a mere convenience of Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and bear and rear children, and am a woman and not a pet animal to please men and prey on them! What are you, you poor slave of a painted face and a bundle of skunk’s fur? You were a man-child when I bore you. Lua was a woman-child when I bore her. What have you made of yourselves?” | Part 1, Act 2 | 303 | 31 |
| Arjillax: “Just so. Well, the Archangel Michael was of my opinion, not yours. He began by painting on the ceiling the newly born in all their childish beauty. But when he had done this he was not satisfied; for the temple was no more impressive than it had been before, except that there was a strength and promise of greater things about his newly born ones than any other artist had attained to. So he painted all round these newly born a company of ancients, who were in those days called prophets and sybils, whose majesty was that of the mind alone at its intensest. And this painting was acknowledged through ages and ages to be the summit and masterpiece of art. Of course we cannot believe such a tale literally. It is only a legend. We do not believe in archangels; and the notion that thirty thousand years ago sculpture and painting existed, and had even reached the glorious perfection they have reached with us, is absurd. But what men cannot realize they can at least aspire to. They please themselves by pretending that it was realized in a golden age of the past. This splendid legend endured because it lived as a desire in the hearts of the greatest artists. The temple of Mediterranea never was built in the past, nor did Michael the Archangel exist. But today the temple is here; and the man is here. I, Arjillax, am the man. I will place in your theatre such images of the newly born as must satisfy even Ecrasia’s appetite for beauty; and I will surround them with ancients more august than any who walk through our woods.” | Part 5 | 279 | 28 |

## Small roles that can be doubled

These pairs of small roles never speak in the same scene, so one actor could play both. Check entrances and silent appearances in your script before you cast it this way.

- Burge and The Archbishop
- Burge and Confucius
- Burge and Cain
- Burge and Adam
- Burge and Pygmalion
- Burge and The She-Ancient
- Burge and The Serpent
- Burge and Mrs. Lutestring
- Burge and Napoleon
- Burge and The Envoy
- Burge and Barnabas
- Burge and Acis

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Back to Methuselah?

The Elderly Gentleman, with about 827 lines and 7,308 words, 10.5% of everything spoken in the play. Zoo is next, with about 506 lines (6.3%).

### How long is Back to Methuselah?

The full text has 69,551 spoken words, about 497 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary.

### How many speaking roles are in Back to Methuselah?

77 named roles speak in this edition, across 8 scenes. 57 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled.

## How we count

Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).