Abstract
This essay aims at exploring how Bernard Shaw experiments the tradition of modern drama through the concept of human and post-human in cyclical time of Biblical myth in relation to theme of Back to Methuselah. Especially, he intends to seek the way in which human beings could be evolved and saved through the selective breeding of new species represented by long-livers and the destruction of human beings represented by short-livers in the action of Back to Methuselah in terms of the theories of social Darwinism and negative eugenics. Shaw has developed and fulfilled the theories of his contemporaries’ intellectual discourses which are always related to the themes and ideas of playwriting for his dramatic purposes. Accordingly, Back to Methuselah could be regarded as Shavian epic considering the perspective insights of human existence and human condition for the progress of civilization. Even though his evolutionary and philosophical thoughts revealed in the play seem to be radical, his hopeful vision of human future and the improvement of humankind will be continued as far as thought can reach.
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