connect through the personage of the Good Samaritan,
who describes his active charity and demonstrates how
it alone can heal the soul.
Vision 6 (Passus 18) is short and closely connected
to Visions 7 and 8. The hero wins his joust, but Con-
science and his followers receive a temporary setback.
Scattered throughout are Langland’s attempts at recre-
ating the contemporary church service. Vision 7 (Pas-
sus 19) contextualizes the Christian community within
history. Will sees Piers carrying a cross and bleeding—
not taking Christ’s place but, rather, demonstrating the
merging of actual and mystical. Vision 8 (Passus 20)
returns Will to the forefront. He meets Need and
almost falls prey. He is affl icted by age and must choose
between the world and the spirit. Conscience, who
here assumes a role similar to Piers’s earlier one, calls
for an end to punishment, and the Dreamer is thus
caught up in a world entranced by “pride of life”—
sheer relief from having survived the BLACK DEATH.
Will then awakens with the name Piers Plowman ring-
ing in his ears.
Overall, the PIERS PLOWMAN TRADITION became an
important part of English VERNACULAR literature.
However, this history is a controversial one. Early
on, Piers Plowman became associated with LOLLARD-
ISM, particularly because of the dreamer’s active role
in determining his own salvation and the anticlerical
statements it contains (e.g., the greedy Orders). Later
on, Protestant reformers and poets, such as ROBERT
CROWLEY and Thomas Churchyard, heralded Piers as
inspiring and wrote literature based on it. Indeed,
Robert Crowley published an edition of the poem in
1550, hailing it as a proto-Protestant reform text.
Scholars have determined that Crowley altered his
version of the text by deleting and adding lines and
altering others.
Though seized upon by reformers of both religion
and social systems, Langland’s position throughout the
poem is conservative and orthodox. He supports the
traditional THREE ESTATES, and while scathing towards
the rich and indolent, he is equally derisive towards all
who fail to live up to their expectations. Greed is a sin
of the rich, the church, and the poor equally. Simply
by calling attention to needed reforms, however, Piers
became labeled as revolutionary.
FURTHER READING
Aers, David. Piers Plowman and Christian Allegory. London:
Arnold, 1975.
Alford, John A., ed. A Companion to Piers Plowman. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.
Baldwin, Anna P. The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman.
Cambridge: Brewer, 1981.
Bloomfi eld, Morton. Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century
Apocalypse. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1962.
Brewer, Charlotte, and A. G. Rigg, eds. Piers Plowman: A
Fascimile of the Z-Text in Bodelian Library, Oxford MS Bod-
ley 851. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell & Brewer, 1994.
Griffi ths, Lavinia. Personifi cation in Piers Plowman. Cam-
bridge: Brewer, 1985.
Pearsall, Derek, ed. William Langland’s Piers Plowman: The
C-Text. 2nd ed. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994.
Schmidt, A. V. C., ed. William Langland: Piers Plowman: A
Critical Edition of the B-Text based on Trinity College Cam-
bridge MS B.15.17. 2nd ed. London: Dent, 1995.
Simpson, James. Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text.
London: Longman, 1990.Piers Plowman: Prologue WILLIAM LANGLAND (ca.
1362–1386) The prologue to Piers Plowman opens
with the narrator wandering in the Malvern Hills,
where he lies down by a stream, falls asleep, and has a
dream. Dressed in sheep-like garments that suggest he
is an errant sinner and a penitent, he is tired, having
gone astray, implying he is a lost soul. He has been
preoccupied with the things of this world. In his
dream, he sees “a fair feeld ful of folk” (B-text, l. 17)
overlooked by two castles; there is a tower on a hill
and a dungeon in a valley, representing heaven and
hell. In the A-text, the rest of the Prologue consists of
little more than a catalogue of the people present and
observations on whether they do or do not fulfi ll their
duties. It discusses those who work and those who laze
around, consuming the efforts of others. There is a
strong moralizing note, unlike the geniality of GEOF-
FREY CHAUCER. In the B-text, lines 31–32, there is a
harsh note against cupidity, the desire to acquire
riches. Lines 35–36 note that those who lie make fools
of themselves.
There is no obvious order in the portraits. There are
large numbers of people milling about, good and bad
people intermingling. Underlying these seemingly hap-322 PIERS PLOWMAN: PROLOGUE