Content: introduction

(Piers Plowman, Prol. 46-52)
they liked. Antifraternalism—that is, the stereotyping of the friars as sly hustlers for money, who abused their authority and who preached poverty but lived grandly off others—were mainstays of Lollard satires, of some wonderful Chaucerian poetry, and indeed of Piers Plowman, which even depicts the Antichrist, who destroys Holy Church Unity as a friar. Yet it should be noted that in many ways Langland shows great affinities with Franciscan ideals, such as true mendicancy (i.e., the embracing of poverty) and missionary activity, and that it is the perceived decline from those ideals, not the institution of friars, that piques his anger.
Finally, the presence in this world of non-Christians was a major problem for Langland and many others in fourteenth-century England. Jewish communities had been expelled from England by Richard I in 1290, and it is unlikely that Langland traveled abroad where he could have encountered individuals of many faiths. Yet Langland, like many preachers and other writers, shows great concern for evangelism: the view was that the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity should be a major goal of the papacy. This can be seen as a peaceful ideal, yet the corollary was severe: if these heretics refuse to believe and if they threaten Christian territories, they should be forced into submission, even death. Such was the ideology that fueled the many crusades led by Western bishops and secular leaders against the Muslims in the later Middle Ages (with little success).
In Langland’s day the Turks’ encroachment upon the West made these issues especially urgent. From the 1320s, the Ottomans had expanded their empire into Europe; by the 1360s they were consistently sacking cities in eastern Europe. The Battle of Kosovo in 1389 gave the Turks control over the Balkan region. Western Christians sought to repel the Turkish advance by a crusade in 1396, but the Christians were slaughtered at Nicopolis, in effect ending the crusading era. The B text of Piers Plowman relates a series of dreams in which Will the Dreamer either witnesses events or has discussions with a variety of figures. Most of these are allegorical personifications, either of social concepts and institutions (such as “Holy Church,” “Scripture,” and “Meed,” the idea of reward), or of elements that make us human (“Reason” and “Soul”). The Dreamer’s encounters with such figures can be seen as the author’s struggle to understand these concepts and their role in social and individual well-being. The overarching structure is Will’s search for “Truth” and his attempts to understand how to “do well, better, and best”—that is, how to live a Christian life in the face of all the failings of humanity evident in late fourteenth-century England. Piers Plowman B is divided into a Prologue and 20 passus, or chapters, which relate eight dreams and two dreams-within-dreams. Many of the poem’s surviving manuscripts call the first two visions the Visio (meaning “Vision), and the final six the Vita of Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best (meaning the “Life of Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best”). But it is possible that these rubrics originate from later scribes of the poem.
The Visio begins in the Prologue, in which Will falls asleep and sees “A fair field full of folk” situated between a dungeon and a tower. In Dream One, Lady Holy Church explains the meaning of his vision: “Truth” lives in the tower, while the dungeon is the Castle of Care, whose captain is Wrong, “Father of falsehood” (Piers Plowman, 1.64). Next, Will learns about Falsehood through the figure of Lady Meed (“reward”), who is to be married to False. When Theology objects to the marriage, a trial before the King takes place in Westminster. Meed and Conscience, to whom the King has offered Meed’s hand, debate the role of rewards. To adjudicate the impasse, Reason is brought to the courts at Westminster. The King agrees with Reason that Lady Meed perverts the cause of justice. Most everyone in the court thinks she is “a cursed slut,” so she mopes (Piers Plowman, 4.160). The King scorns her: “Through your law I believe I lose many reversions. / Meed overmasters law and much obstructs the truth” (Piers Plowman 4.175–76). No one marries her; by the end of the episode the issue of her marriage has given way to that of reward and its role in justice.
At this point, the Dreamer awakens and promptly falls back asleep, inaugurating the second dream. Reason preaches repentance, prompting the Seven Deadly Sins to confess their sins and undertake a pilgrimage to Truth. A plowman named Piers offers to guide them by means of the Ten Commandments and the Christian virtues. First, declares Piers, the pilgrims must help him plow his half-acre. Piers calls upon Hunger to force slackers to do their share, and Hunger offers a policy for dealing with the hungry: the indigent (those who are physically unable to work) should be given food, but the able-bodied should work for theirs. Truth sends Piers a pardon, but when a priest claims not to find any pardon written on the paper, Piers tears it in anger, announcing that he will cease plowing and instead devote his life to penance and prayers.
Dreams Three and Four constitute The Life of Do-Well. After his second dream, having been awakened by the argument between the priest and Piers, Will asks two friars where he might find “Do-well.” The friars claim that Do-Well lives with them; Will argues with them by saying that Do-Well cannot be among sinners. The friars give an exemplum, that is, tell a brief story, to explain their point, but Will says, “I have no natural knowledge … to understand your words, / But if I may live and go on looking, I shall learn better” (Piers Plowman, 8.57–58). Will’s third dream continues his quest. Will encounters Thought, with whom he argues about the meaning of Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best. At this point, Will seems to think that the three are people or things, whereas the poem’s point seems to be that one finds “Do-Well” by doing well. Will and his companion meet Wit, who says that Do-Well lives in the body and goes on to discuss the body’s animating forces. Wit then offers definitions of Do-Well: almsgiving; marriage; and doing as the law teaches. The characters are joined. In the poem, Piers warns workers to labor while they may, since Hunger is coming; he gives a prophecy that “Daw the diker [will] die for hunger, / Unless God of his goodness grants us a truce” (Piers Plowman, 6.330-31). The next passage says “Truth heard tell of this and sent word to Piers / To take his team and till the earth, / And procured him a pardon a poena et a culpa [“from punishment and from guilt”], / For him and for his heirs for evermore after” (Piers Plowman, 7.1-4). Basically, the process of sermon, confession, repentance, and pilgrimage leads to such a pardon. However, the poem’s mention of the pardon has been the center of some controversy. In the poem, Piers tears up the “pardon.” One of the points of contention in his tearing it is whether he does so on the same grounds that he disapproves of pilgrimage: that is, whether he expresses the view that a person ought not to focus on paper pardons but on spiritual ones.
by Dame Study, who upbraids the misuse of reason by her husband, Wit, and other scholars. Will then debates the value of wisdom with Clergy and Scripture. He subsequently has an “inner dream,” or a dream within the dream, in which he foolishly follows Fortune. After friars refuse to help him, he discusses the nature of God’s justice with Lewte (Justice), Scripture, and the Emperor Trajan, a righteous pagan. Nature then shows Will the natural world, in which humans do not act according to Reason. Will and Reason discuss the value of human and divine suffering, after which Will awakens from his inner dream and encounters a new figure, Imaginative (the power to form mental images of external things or things from the past). Imaginative questions the worth of Will’s “meddling with makings” (writing poetry), which Will defends as a form of work (Piers Plowman, B.12.16). Imaginative says that while learning is very valuable, grace is more important, and responds affirmatively to Will’s question about whether the heathen can be saved.
Will awakens and considers his dream, then falls asleep again. In his fourth dream, Conscience invites him to dine with Clergy, an academic Doctor (professor), and Patience, a pilgrim. The Doctor, Clergy, and Patience all respond to Conscience’s request that they define Do-Well and Do-Better. Conscience and Patience set out on a pilgrimage together, on which they meet Hawkin, who represents “Active Life” and is the Dreamer’s alter ego. Hawkin’s coat, Will notices, is stained with sin; this leads Will to consider the subject of minstrelsy and poverty. Conscience says “your best coat, Hawkin, / Has many spots and stains; it should be washed” and proceeds to teach him how to do so (Piers Plowman, 13.313-14). Together Conscience and Patience offer to help him keep his coat clean by means of penitence and submission to God’s will. Patience teaches him that Charity is found among the poor and praises patiently borne poverty. Will wakes up again.
Dreams five and six constitute The Life of Do-Better. The first passage recounts Will’s encounter with Anima (Soul), who gives a long sermon on charity, its role in converting Jews and Muslims, and its manifestations in the history of the Church. Next, Anima teaches that charity is a tree in the heart, tended by Liberum Arbitrium (Free Will) on land owned by Piers Plowman. At the mention of Piers, Will swoons and has his second inner-dream, in which he sees the tree, whose symbolic significance Piers explains. The tree’s apples come to symbolize figures from the Old Testament who fall under the devil’s power. The Dreamer then sees the Annunciation, in which Mary learns from the angel Gabriel that she is to be the mother of the Messiah, and also sees events from the life of Christ before awakening from the inner dream. The rest of Dream Five relates Will’s encounters with figures for Faith, Hope, and Charity, embodied in Abraham, Moses, and the Good Samaritan. This last figure teaches Will about the Trinity, the doctrine that in one God are three persons: Father (God the creator of the world), Son (Jesus), and spirit (the spirit of God, or the holy spirit).
Will’s sixth dream occurs when he falls asleep before Palm Sunday services. He witnesses Christ entering Jerusalem and learns from Faith that Christ will take the armor of Piers Plowman to fight against Death. After Christ’s crucifixion, Will descends to Hell, where the Four Daughters of God (Mercy, Peace, Truth, and Righteousness) debate about whether man can be saved from Hell. Christ arrives, and they celebrate when he does indeed free the human souls. Easter bells awaken Will, who calls his wife, Kit, and daughter, Calote, to go with him to church.
Will again falls asleep in church. In Dream Seven he envisions Piers, painted bloody and carrying a cross, coming in among the people. Conscience explains Christ’s roles as knight, king, and conqueror. The Holy Spirit descends upon Piers and his fellows, distributing gifts of grace. Piers receives a plow to sow the Word of God, and a barn, which represents Holy Church Unity. Pride attacks Piers as he plows, so Conscience urges Christians into the barn, and Will awakens.
As the final dream begins, Will is disturbed; he encounters Need, who argues that Temperance is the primary Christian virtue. Falling asleep, Will dreams of the attack on Holy Church by the figure of a great adversary, the Antichrist, who is followed by friars. Will is attacked by Old Age and takes refuge in Holy Church. Kynde (Nature) and Conscience cannot thwart the entry of Friar Flatterer. Conscience announces he will go on pilgrimage to seek Piers Plowman, and cries for grace until Will awakens.
4 . The figures of Piers the Plowman and Will the Dreamer
The implications of Langland’s decision to feature a plowman in his poem were enormously powerful—so much so that John Ball, a leader of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, cites “Piers Plowman” as if he were a historical individual rather than a poetic idealization.
Yet the details of the poem itself do not endorse the revolutionary ends that Ball and others seem to have found in it. When Piers says he will show the pilgrims the way to St. Truth after plowing a half-acre by the highway, a knight asks him to teach him to plow; Piers responds by insisting that both plowman and knight uphold their given positions:
I shall sweat and strain and sow for us both,
And also labor for your love all my lifetime,
In exchange for your championing Holy
Church and me
Against wasters and wicked men who would
destroy me.
(Piers Plowman, 6.25-28)
The poem also affirms the centrality of the Church in English life—a role resented by the rebels, who directed their animosity against the Church by beheading the archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, in the rising of 1381. The whole episode of the pilgrimage to Truth, as John Burrow argues in “The Action of Langland’s Second Vision,” dramatizes the traditional process of sermon, confession, repentance, and pilgrimage. Langland substitutes “plowing”—that is, performing one’s duties faithfully—for literal pilgrimage, which he disdains. But the structure of this episode, and of many others throughout the poem, makes clear Langland’s support of traditional ecclesiastical roles in society.
Moreover, Piers’s reference to “wasters and wicked men” seems to accept without question the definitions of society upon which the Statutes of Laborers rested: those workers who are “true” to their lords are indeed doing their part to “plow the half-acre,” while those who attempt to take advantage of the labor shortfall after the Black
John the Shepherd [pseudonym for John Ball], formerly priest at Saint Mary’s in York, and now of Colchestre, warmly greets John the Nameless, and John the Miller, and John Carter, and bids them to beware of guile in the town, and stand together in God’s name, and bids Piers Plowman to go to his work, and fully chastises Hob the Robber, and take with you John Trueman and all his fellows, and no more, and obey only one leader, and no more.…
(italics added; Ball in Dean. p. 135)
Death are “wasters” who should be prosecuted (Piers Plowman, 6.28). Langland, to be sure, is no reactionary who blindly seeks to uphold the status quo; indeed, this and many other passages in the poem are poignant in their approach to the treatment of the destitute. Moreover, an element of Piers Plowman that resounds nearly as powerfully as the figure of Piers is that of the Dreamer himself, who expresses fears that his own work—the writing of his poem, an activity often likened to plowing, especially in relation to the “sowing of the Word”—might be deemed “wasteful” by those in authority (Bowers, pp. 214-15). The poem’s intimate relation to such events as the Revolt of 1381 and the Statutes of Laborers show conclusively that his poem is hardly wasteful, though. It can itself be an actor in history, despite the intentions of the author.
It is impossible to identify any particular historical person or event that inspired Langland to write. Certain historical events are clearly reflected in the poem, such as the Prologue’s episode of the coronation, which is clearly indebted to the ascension of Richard II in 1377 (Baldwin, pp. 78-81). But other attempts to find historical personages in the poem—such as the equation of Lady Meed with Edward III’s mistress Alice Perrers, or the identification of references to the Great Schism of 1378—rest on flimsier ground.
As noted, Piers Plowman was an actor in social history as well as a respondent to it. Likewise, it played an active role in British literary history, initiating what came to be known as “the Piers Plowman tradition.” This tradition consists of a series of poems from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century that appropriate Piers Plowman’s imagery and alliterative style for radical political ends: Piers the Plowman’s
5 . Imaginative berates the Dreamer Will
“And you meddle with making verse and might go say your Psalter, And pray for them that provide your bread, for there are plenty of books To tell men what Do-Well is, Do-Better and Do-Best both And preachers to explain it all, of many a pair of friars.” I saw well he spoke the truth, and somewhat to excuse myself Said, “Cato comforted his son, clerk though he was, To solace himself sometimes: so I do when I write. Interpose some pleasures at times among your cares. And I’ve heard it said of holy men, how they now and then Played to be more perfect in their prayers afterward. But if there were any one who would tell me What Do-Well and Do-Better were, and Do-Best the last, I would never do any work but wend to Holy Church And stay there saying prayers save when I ate or slept.”