21/06/2022
*WILLIAM LANGLAND* *(1332? ....?)*
*LIFE*
Very little is known of Langland. He was born prob-
ably near Malvern, in Worcestershire, the son of a poor
freeman, and in his early life lived in the fields as a shep-
herd. Later he went to London with his wife and children,
getting a hungry living as clerk in the church. His real life
meanwhile was that of a seer, a prophet after Isaiah’s own
heart, if we may judge by the prophecy which soon found
a voice in Piers Plowman. In 1399, after the success of his
great work, he was possibly writing another poem called
Richard the Redeless, a protest against Richard II; but we
are not certain of the authorship of this poem, which was
left unfinished by the assassination of the king. After 1399
Langland disappears utterly, and the date of his death is
unknown.
*PIERS PLOWMAN.* “The voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” might well be
written at the beginning of this remarkable poem. Truth,sincerity, a direct and practical appeal to conscience, and
a vision of right triumphant over wrong,—these are the
elements of all prophecy; and it was undoubtedly these
elements in Piers Plowman that produced such an impres-
sion on the people of England. For centuries literature had
been busy in pleasing the upper classes chiefly; but here
at last was a great poem which appealed directly to the
common people, and its success was enormous. The whole
poem is traditionally attributed to Langland; but it is now
known to be the work of several different writers. It first
appeared in 1362 as a poem of eighteen hundred lines, and
this may have been Langland’s work. In the next thirty
years, during the desperate social conditions which led to
Tyler’s Rebellion, it was repeatedly revised and enlarged
by different hands till it reached its final form of about
fifteen thousand lines.
The poem as we read it now is in two distinct parts, the
first containing the vision of Piers, the second a series of
visions called “The Search for Dowel, Dobet, Dobest” (do
well, better, best). The entire poem is in strongly accented,
alliterative lines, something like Beowulf, and its immense
popularity shows that the common people still cherished
this easily memorized form of Saxon poetry. Its tremen-
dous appeal to justice and common honesty, its clarion call
to every man, whether king, priest, noble, or laborer, to do
his Christian duty, takes from it any trace of prejudice or
bigotry with which such works usually abound. Its loyalty
to the Church, while denouncing abuses that had crept into
it in that period, was one of the great influences which led
to the Reformation in England. Its two great principles,
the equality of men before God and the dignity of honest
labor, roused a whole nation of freemen. Altogether it is
one of the world’s great works, partly because of its na-
tional influence, partly because it is the very best picture
we possess of the social life of the fourteenth century:
Briefly, Piers Plowman is an allegory of life. In the first vision, that of the “Field Full of Folk,” the poet lies down on
the Malvern Hills on a May morning, and a vision comes to
him in sleep. On the plain beneath him gather a multitude
of folk, a vast crowd expressing the varied life of the world.
All classes and conditions are there; workingmen are toiling
that others may seize all the first fruits of their labor and
live high on the proceeds; and the genius of the throng
is Lady Bribery, a powerfully drawn figure, expressing the
corrupt social life of the times.
The next visions are those of the Seven Deadly Sins, alle-
gorical figures, but powerful as those of Pilgrim’s Progress,
making the allegories of the Romaunt of the Rose seem like
shadows in comparison. These all came to Piers asking the
way to Truth; but Piers is plowing his half acre and refuses
to leave his work and lead them. He sets them all to hon-
est toil as the best possible remedy for their vices, and
preaches the gospel of work as a preparation for salvation.
Throughout the poem Piers bears strong resemblance to
John Baptist preaching to the crowds in the wilderness.
The later visions are proclamations of the moral and spiri-
tual life of man. The poem grows dramatic in its intensity,
rising to its highest power in Piers’s triumph over Death.
And then the poet wakes from his vision with the sound of
Easter bells ringing in his ears.
Here are a few lines to illustrate the style and language;
but the whole poem must be read if one is to understand
its crude strength and prophetic spirit:
(In a somer sesun, whon softe was the sonne,
I schop[87] me into a shroud, as I a scheep were,
In habite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,
Went wyde in this world, wondres to here.
Bote in a Mayes mornynge, on Malverne hulles,
Me byfel a ferly,[88] of fairie me thoughte..... *THE END*.......
