Piers
Plowman
Provider:
Cecilia Liu /
¼B³·¬Ã
Opening Dream
- The opening dream,
by the side of a hillside stream on a warm summer morning, is of a field (with
a tower on one side and a dungeon on the other) in which all sorts and conditions
of men wander or work. Some of them make pacts to go on pilgrimage, others
are enticed by the words of a false pardoner. The focus is soon on the state
and function of the Church. From papal power it shifts to kingly.
An angelic preacher exhorts that kingly justice must be mingled with mercy,
and (in the B text) the problems of government for the common profit are particularized
in a vivid topical application of the fable of the rats and mice who would
bell the cat. The scene shifts again to the clamour of London shops and streets
and courts. By the close of the Prologue our curiosity is aroused, and the
opening of the first passus promises some explanation. It is provided
by Lady Holy Church, who comes down from a high tower in the form of a benign
and beautiful Lady who might have stepped out of a niche or west portal of
a cathedral where Ecclesia and Synagoga are seen juxtaposed. Her theme is
that of the Redemptive Love which most men in the dale are disregarding. The
pattern of her discourse is homiletic--it is replete with texts and biblical
allusion--but she is not identified with the visible church except in so far
as she reminds the Dreamer of his baptism. The mercy enjoined by the
angel of the Prologue is here shown as an attribute of God himself, and of
his Son, who would have mercy on his murderers. Thus the Passion makes its
first appearance in the poem; at subsequent high points it will be pictured
with increasing fullness--the Cross is the kingbeam on which the whole structure
rests. Equally noteworthy is Holy Church's definition of Truth:"a kynde knowyng¡Kthat
kenneth in thine herte / For to lovye thi Lorde lever than thi selve', a sense
implanted in man. Piers will say that he knows Truth 'as kyndely as clerke
doth his bokes' (which is 'by heart', as we say) where 'kindly' means not
simply 'naturally, instinctively', but 'intimately'. The Dreamer will
ask Study to teach him to know what is 'Dowel' (x. 146); and Patience will
say that Contrition, Faith, and Conscience are 'kindly Dowel' (xiv. 87): its
very essence. Lady Church's withdrawal from the dream action--after
she has warned the Dreamer of the false allure of a richly decked maid called
Meed who is to be married by Liar's contrivance to one False--underlines
the differences between her and the fourteen-century church, with its venal
and self-indulgent priests and religious, who are to figure largely in the
remainder of the work.
- In the next three passus the Dream
compasses the evils and the problems of contemporary society, and the sins
of individuals--portrayed in vignettes done with unprecedented satiric force
and brio. Coming after Holy Church's pronouncements, the emphasis
may seem surprising: it implies that Man cannot advance in Christian perfection
until he has settled the basis of society and his part in it. Elementary needs,
elementary justice must be satisfied before he can grow in personal godliness.
A King who has been involved in foreign ways, but is now governed by Reason
and Conscience (Passus IV) finds no room for the Lady Meed that has almost
overturned the rule of law. As the court moves to church to hear mass, the
Dreamer wakes, only to dream again of the Field in which Reason, as a bishop,
is preaching, as to the whole realm of England devastated as it is by storm
and pestilence. Each estate of the realm is admonished and finally the pilgrims
whom we have glimpsed in the Prologue are adjured to 'seek Saint Truth, for
he may save you all.'
- The capital sins now passed in
review are--save for Pride and Luxury--characterized with a wealth of descriptive
phrase that matches Chaucer: Envy, pale and looking like a leek that
has lain long in the sun; Wrath, sniveling with two white eyes; Avarice
'bitelbrowed and baberlipped,' cheeks lolling like a leather purse; Glutton,
with guts that 'gunne to gothely [rumble] as two gredy sowes'; Sloth,
'all bislabered with two slymy eighten [eyes]'. Their confessions fill
out these sketches with vivid vignettes: Envy, turning a covetous eye on Eleyne's
new robe; Wrath, who admits to having been battered on the bare arse in the
chapter house; Avarice, who thinks th French term 'restitution' means robbing;
Sloth, who says he does not know his 'paternoster as the prest it syngeth'
but rather 'ryhmes of Robyn hOod and Randolf Erle of Chestre.'
- All these seemingly depraved characters--composite
in so far as they embody multifold manifestations of the sins--recognize the
need of penitence, and know, or learn, the formulas of the Confessional. Thus
it comes about that Repentance the priest can pray on their behalf the great
Easter prayer that links the Creation with the Crucifixion, and can beseech
God 'that art owre fader and owre brother, be merciable to us,' That the prayer
marks a turning-point is hinted by the sudden, if momontary, appearance of
Hope, who seized a horn of 'deus, tu conversus¡K' and blew it so that all the
saints in heaven sang at once. Such heavenly song will not be heard again
till the daughters of God 'carole' on Easter Day (Passus XVIII).
- The folk who have made their Lenten
penance are now fit to follow the bishop's injunction and seek Saint Truth.
They are to pass through the Ten Commandments, and after a liturgical allusion
to the Virgin Birth and the Virgin's part in Redemption, they conclude with
the revelation that Truth is to be found in the heart; it was in the heart
that Holy Church had located the Kind Wit that teaches one to love the Lord
more than oneself.
- The conflict between good and
evil, far from being settled in accordance with the dictates of reason, needs
to be resolved by other means. At the end of the poem, therefore, we are brought
to the last vision of all, that which transforms Piers into the human semblance
of God incarnate and crucifies. Freewill, we are told, "for love hath undertake,
/ That this Jesus of his gentrise ¡K shal jouste in Peers armes, ¡K" (C Text,
Passus XXI, 20-24). By this supreme transformation, the scope of the
whole vision is finally extended. The duel between good and evil is
described in terns of a 'joust,' a courtly tournament. Jesus has become a
'prykiere,' a knight riding out to meet his challenger, and his armour, the
humanity he has assumed for the purposes of battle, is that of Piers, who
has borne his active representation of the Christian virtues through the successive
stages of his allegorical pilgrimage and is now ready to play his part in
the decisive encounter.
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English
Literature I: the Medieval Period;English
Literature and Culture
From Medieval Period to the Eighteenth Century