Piers Plowman tradition
Encyclopedia
The Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball
(d.1381) and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I
and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland
's poem Piers Plowman
. (A much larger number of texts, with less obvious connection to Piers Plowman, may also be considered part of the tradition.) Because the Plowman appears in the General Prologue to the The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
but does not have his own tale (one of seven such characters), plowman tales are sometimes used as additions to The Canterbury Tales, or otherwise conflated or associated with Chaucer.
As a rule, they satirically reflect economic, social, political, and religious grievances, and are concerned with political decisions and the relation between commoners and king. In these respects they resemble works such as Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II
(1321–27), The Song of the Husbandman (c. 1340), Wynnere and Wastoure
(c. 1353), and The Parlement of the Thre Ages (c. 1375-1400). The Piers Plowman tradition therefore contributed to an emerging early modern "public sphere
". Most of the works of the tradition are anonymous; many are pseudepigraphic by authorial design or later misattribution. The distinction between fiction and history in them is often blurred.
Along with the writings of John Ball, the earliest contributions to the Piers Plowman tradition are extensively associated with the Lollards
:
Less directly and self-consciously evocative of Piers Plowman are:
Many of the previously mentioned plowman texts, which first circulated in manuscript, reappeared later in print, often with some degree of intentional alteration and editorializing that aimed at construing them as proto-Protestant. This is true also of the first printed editions of Piers Plowman in 1550 and 1561 by Robert Crowley
and Owen Rogers. William Tyndale
may have (and was thought by some contemporaries) to have supplied the preface to the printed edition of the Praier and Complaynte, which aroused the critical pen of Thomas More
. John Foxe
did his part to canonize the same text in four editions of his famous Actes and Monuments
from 1570 to 1610. Like Jack Upland, The Plowman's Tale became associated with Geoffrey Chaucer and was added by various editors to four editions of Chaucer's collected works between 1542 and 1602. I Playne Piers which Cannot Flatter, a mixture of parts of The Plowman's Tale and new material added some time after 1540, was printed in 1550 and ascribed to the author of Piers Plowman who was then unknown or identified as either Chaucer, John Wycliffe
, or Robert Langland. I Playne Piers was reprinted by the Puritan
Martinist writers in the Martin Marprelate
Controversy in 1589. It was then retitled, O read me, for I am of great antiquitie . . . I am the Gransier of Martin Mare-prelitte.
There were also many new texts produced in the sixteenth century that may be considered parts of the Piers Plowman tradition, such as Edmund Spenser
's The Shepheardes Calendar which makes use of a character named "Piers" and consciously borrows lines from The Plowman's Tale. Spenser's character, Colin Clout, who appears in two of his poems, is also a Piers-like figure derived from John Skelton
. John Bale
regarded Skelton as a vates pierius - poetic prophet, with pierius perhaps alluding to Piers, the pre-eminent English prophet-poet. Bale was pleased with Skelton's attacks on the clergy and his open breach of clerical celibacy. Colin Clout (1521) is one of Skelton's anti-Wolsey satires where the title character, a vagabond, complains about corrupt churchmen.
Sixteenth-century texts that refer to the poem Piers Plowman or the character "Piers Plowman" include:
Less directly associated with Piers are:
Like Thomas More and Robert Crowley, Bishop Hugh Latimer
valued "commune wealth" more than "private commodity." He was an outspoken critic of enclosure, the abuses of landlords, and the aristocrats who lined their pockets through the Dissolution of the Monasteries
. Like Crowley, Latimer was able to be especially outspoken when Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
had controlling influence in the court as Lord Protector
of England during part of the minority of Edward VI
. A famous sermon of Latimer's that represented preachers as God's plowmen, "The Sermon of the Plowers," was delivered at St. Paul's Cross, 18 January 1548 and was printed that year by John Day
. This was the last of four "Sermons on the Plough;" unfortunately the first three are lost. While Latimer's message is spiritual, it has a sharp political edge that also acknowledges the material concerns of people affected by enclosure. Latimer attacks idle clergy as "plowmen" who cause a spiritual famine, and enclosure is used as a metaphor for hindrances to proper preaching. The devil is called the busiest bishop and greatest plowman in England; he is seeding the land with the ritual and ornamental trappings of popery. Latimer himself, through the style of his sermons, typifies the plain, homely and direct speech of Piers and popular Protestantism. Anthony Anderson
's The Shield of our Safetie (1581) uses Latimer's figure of the pastor as a plowman but is unwilling to ascribe special virtue to the commons and rural laborers. Godliness is lacking "from top to toe" in England, "from the Nobilitie, to the Plowman and his mate." George Gifford
's A Briefe Discourse of Certaine Points of the Religion which is among the Common Sort of Christians (1583) asserts that "it is not for plowmen to meddle with scriptures."
Like Desiderius Erasmus
and his work, Piers was open to being appropriated by Lollards and later Protestant reformers. William Tyndale
's memorable statement to a "popish priest," recorded in John Foxe
' Acts and Monuments
, is an echo of Erasmus' Paraclesis, which also resonated with popular images of the pious plowman: "If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the scripture than thou dost." Earlier, Erasmus had written, in his introduction to his Greek
New Testament
, "Would that, as a result [of vernacular translations and the setting of scripture to popular tunes], the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow." (Elsewhere Tyndale is closer to Erasmus: "I wold to god the plowman wold singe a text of the scripture at his plowbeme...") Similarly, the text of Piers and the figure of the English plowman developed from a reformist Catholic identity toward a much more revolutionary, first Wycliffite (i.e., Lollard), then more anti-Roman Catholic, Protestant identity which could be and indeed was turned against perceived abuses in the Church of England
and English society in general.
However, just as C. S. Lewis
cautions against viewing Tyndale and Thomas More
as "the representatives respectively of an old and new order," there is more continuity than discontinuity between the Catholic and Protestant, medieval and Renaissance/Reformation versions of Piers. Like Tyndale and More, as Lewis writes, "both inveighed against enclosure
and sheep-farming and demanded that the desires of the 'economic man' should be completely subordinated to traditional Christian ethics." To Tyndale and More, Lewis remarks, "what they had in common doubtless seemed a mere 'highest common factor...'" As the chief emblem of what Tyndale, More, and others like them had in common, the figure of Piers and the plowman--with their shifting guises in the sixteenth century--is an index to changes in English society that were ultimately unfavorable to the social vision that Piers originally stood for.
After nearly two centuries, the plowman tradition of social complaint and satire became more Chaucerian
and less Langlandian
to the extent that it turned more worldly-wise, if not cynical, and less ardently idealistic or concerned with the pursuit of the pure principle and reality of social justice. It became, increasingly, a secular vehicle for lampooning and complaining about class rivalries and political dissent--and also for containing or restraining such things. What is notable about the Piers/plowman literature of the Elizabethan era (barring a few exceptions) is the absence of the old religious radical who speaks the plain truth for the poor, godly commons against corrupt elites and dissembling, hypocritical English clergy. In many cases the name of Piers remained current, but his vocation generally was altered; with few exceptions, he was no longer a religious reformer. In fact he tended to become a more secular figure. There were still some rare appearances of the old Piers, but in general it seems that as a traditional "voice of the people," he had to change. This is not to say that Piers became apolitical or even less political, although that may be the case among writers like Gascoigne who point to universal corruption and mock the idea behind much plowman literature that the lowly are intrinsically virtuous. For those who did not reject the tradition, it seems that Piers became less an idealist and more of a pragmatist with a more nuanced view of English society. Criticism of the wealthy and powerful continued, but rather than directly addressing complaints to them and to the mnonarch and parliament as Edwardians like Crowley, Latimer and Thomas Lever
had done, they became the subject of comic, often satiric, popular entertainment. Plays and pamphlets became the vehicle of social analysis, concerned with class identities and rivalries that were rendered with greater complexity and detail than in found in the earlier literature.
Before this shift, Langland's old political-religious-moral animus and the desire for social justice was close to that of social-minded evangelicals of the early and mid-Tudor era who advocated for the re/formation of a godly commonwealth
. But unlike the medieval and early to mid sixteenth-century Piers, his Elizabethan successors discarded the comprehensive, reformist vision underwritten by belief in a theocentric social norm. To an extent this was because the Reformation officially had ended in the eyes of the queen and others who accepted the Elizabethan Religious Settlement
. Censorship laws had been put into effect in 1551, 1553, and 1559, officially banning discussion of religious matters or matters of state. Nevertheless, the Crown was probably unable and unwilling to enforce these laws completely, especially in the case of texts that favored (or sufficiently appeared to favor) its interests--e.g., The Cobler's Prophecy. Radical Puritans who might sympathize with the older Piers as a critic of the established church-state were quite politically incorrect under the Elizabethan establishment and open to--at the least--accusations of naiveté. Other causes were also at work. With the division and collapse of Christendom
in the Reformation, the medieval conception of the social hierarchy, as well as Purgatory
and Hell
, so central to Langland's poem, were vestigial remnants of a passing order. They no longer had a coherence that could support and explain material, political realities as, say, Machiavelli could to the official and often real shock and dismay of the pious. Nor did they retain much spiritual purchase on men's lives once Protestant solafidian
theology altered the fear of Hell and largely eliminated the penitential mentality of Langland's more medieval Catholic world. Even in Piers Plowman one may see, in retrospect, all these outcomes as emerging possibilities.
In the Elizabethan era, Piers' Christological aspect became fully detached from and eclipsed by his role as the universal commoner, a secular economic man among economic men with clashing interests. At the same time, there was a bifurcation of the original, more unitary, carnivalesque
world of Langland's Piers that is interpenetrated by common, aristocratic, and divine characters. Just as in rival high vs. lower class representations of Chaucer at the same time, the emerging divisions of private and public, sacred and secular, this bifurcation was articulated in terms of social class categories that were then emerging in force, much as Mikhail Bakhtin
observes in Rabelais and His World
. The idea of the nation as a "commonwealth" became strained even in the Edwardian era when its (and Piers') ultimately recalcitrant enemies were construed less as abstract vices to be opposed by virtue but more specifically as the policies and practices of landlords, nobles, kings and "private men." The moral and apocalyptic aspects of Piers flourished briefly at mid-century but then dissipated along with the idealism of the Edwardian reformers and their vision of a united commonwealth of interdependent estates. Popular literature evoking Piers by name or in spirit began to construe elites as people with whom one may compete--and win. Langland's "fair field of folk" became a socioeconomic playing field on which elites are perhaps no less important (or even, in fact, less important) to the nation than the common people. In this way Langland's Piers and Piers-like figures helped establish an English national identity based on and for the popular rather than the elite culture. This popular self-understanding seems to have flourished especially in the nonconformist Puritan
mind where it could be radicalized. In other cases, it could be a basis for statist nationalism
According to the Privy Council, military conscription, which was at a high in the late sixteenth century, gave "great ease and good to the country to be ridd of those kinde of people whoe otherwyse wil be a burthen to the country." Such attempts to channel and appropriate the power of the commoners did not escape their notice. In Pierce Pennilesse, Thomas Nashe wrote, "If they have no service abroad, they will make mutinies at home..." Shakespeare's Henry IV similarly advises "busy[ing] giddy minds / With foreign quarrels." Popular awareness of such strategies to channel the (publicly denied) power of the commons toward royal interests did not generate resistance so much as an opportunity for the commons to insert their own interests into the transaction. Perhaps this is why in the Elizabethan era, Piers and Piers-like figures began to appear as itinerant laborers and tradesmen: tinkers, coblers and shoemakers who claimed to represent true Englishness over against effete, pretentious elites. While affirming their loyalty, these humble figures labored to define an English identity from below that was drawn from native, popular traditions going back to Langland and Chaucer. To the extent that the popular opposition between plain and ornate, honest and dissembling was associated with courtiers, (South European) foreignness and Catholicism, the plowman tradition continued to be anti-Catholic and staunchly Protestant. (As a political sensibility and a means of relating to a larger society, much of this mindset has endured, particularly in the United States where it still has a clear link to Protestantism.)
This popular image of the English commonwealth is frequently defined in the Elizabethan era in opposition to Catholic nations (i.e., France and Spain, notably) and "Rome," which are represented as less free and unvirtuous. Hutchins notes that "Even in the most unremittingly absolutist interpretations of Tudor theories of rule, the qualities that Elizabethans claim make a good ruler include dignified concern for the common people" (229). Popular plowman literature constantly reasserts this view: English society is based on its regard for its foundation in the commons. This idea can both empower and co-opt the power of the common people, however. Shakespeare's Henry V exhibits plain, soldierly behavior that allows him to level social distinctions between him and his men in his St. Crispin's day pep-talk before the battle of Agincourt: "He to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition" (4.3.60-67). In the same year of Shakespeare's play (1599), Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday depicted cobblers at home in England while the king is fighting in France. The cobblers declare their lowly nobility, and the hero, Simon Eyre, becomes Mayor of London--another image of tenuously levelled class distinctions at odds with social realities. (See Hobsbawm, Hutchins, Ayers, Dollimore and Sinfield, McEachern, Neill, Kastan, Maynard, Straznicky, and Stevenson.)
As a sturdy working-class fellow in the popular culture, it is not surprising that Piers never made it into the works of the elite writers who predominate in the English literary canon. Aristocrats, like Sir Philip Sidney
, disdained the imitation of Chaucer for his old, uncouth language, which is a judgment based in class prejudice as much as aesthetics. Moreover, Piers was even more archaic and parochial, with the added notoriety of political subversiveness and (now illegal) prophecy. University educated, aspiring courtier-writers with poorer, often rural, backgrounds (e.g., Spenser and Harvey) may have been uneasy with a tradition that sometimes cast a cold eye on the lives and ambitions of upwardly mobile urbanites like themselves. Others, like Greene and Nashe, would exploit this anxiety and use the plowman tradition in order to lampoon would-be courtiers like Harvey, who took the attack very personally. In Nashe we find a new Piers, Pierce Pennilesse, who represents the young London malcontent writer who desires but lacks patronage and recognition of his talent. While this literature is far removed from the straightforward religious and political criticisms of Crowley and others, writers like Nashe and Greene were still finding ways to use the old moral-satirical tradition to expose and attack--or just laugh at--vices directly related to contemporary social and political conditions.
John Ball (priest)
John Ball was an English Lollard priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. In that year, Ball gave a sermon in which he asked the rhetorical question, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?".-Biography:Little is known of Ball's early years. He lived in...
(d.1381) and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland
William Langland
William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
's poem Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus"...
. (A much larger number of texts, with less obvious connection to Piers Plowman, may also be considered part of the tradition.) Because the Plowman appears in the General Prologue to the The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
but does not have his own tale (one of seven such characters), plowman tales are sometimes used as additions to The Canterbury Tales, or otherwise conflated or associated with Chaucer.
As a rule, they satirically reflect economic, social, political, and religious grievances, and are concerned with political decisions and the relation between commoners and king. In these respects they resemble works such as Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II
Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II
Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II, also known as The Simonie and Symonie and Couetise, is a Middle English poem in three distinct versions probably composed and modified over a century by anonymous authors. The original poem, perhaps not exactly reproduced by any of the surviving texts, has been...
(1321–27), The Song of the Husbandman (c. 1340), Wynnere and Wastoure
Wynnere and Wastoure
Wynnere and Wastoure is a fragmentary Middle English poem written in alliterative verse sometime around the middle of the 14th century.-Manuscript:The poem occurs in a single manuscript, British Library Additional MS. 31042...
(c. 1353), and The Parlement of the Thre Ages (c. 1375-1400). The Piers Plowman tradition therefore contributed to an emerging early modern "public sphere
Public sphere
The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action...
". Most of the works of the tradition are anonymous; many are pseudepigraphic by authorial design or later misattribution. The distinction between fiction and history in them is often blurred.
14th and 15th centuries
(Unless otherwise noted, dates given here refer to the year when the work was first written.)Along with the writings of John Ball, the earliest contributions to the Piers Plowman tradition are extensively associated with the Lollards
Lollardy
Lollardy was a political and religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century to the English Reformation. The term "Lollard" refers to the followers of John Wycliffe, a prominent theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Church, especially his...
:
- Pierce the Ploughman's CredePierce the Ploughman's Crede"Pierce the Ploughman's Crede" is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, savagely lampooning the four orders of friars.-Textual History:Surviving in two complete forteenth-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the Crede can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between...
, an anonymous, Lollard, alliterative, anticlerical, satirical poem written c. 1395 and printed in 1553 and 1561. - The Plowman's TaleThe Plowman's TaleThere are actually two pseudo-Chaucerian texts called The Plowman's Tale. In the mid-15th century a rhyme royal Plowman's Tale was added to the text of The Canterbury Tales in the Christ Church MS. This tale is actually an orthodox Roman Catholic, possibly anti-Lollard version of a Marian miracle...
, also known as The Complaynte of the Ploughman, a Lollard poem written c. 1400 and printed by itself about 1533-1536 and again about 1548. - The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto ChristeThe Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto ChristeThe Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe: written not longe after the yere of our Lorde. M. and three hundred is a short , anonymous English Christian text, probably written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and first printed in about 1531...
, a Lollard prose tract and prayer for reform written about 1400, with some sources putting it as early as 1350 or as late as 1450, was printed twice, in about 1531 and 1532. - Richard the RedelessRichard the RedelessRichard the Redeless is an anonymous fifteenth century English alliterative poem that critiques Richard II's kingship and his court, seeking to offer Richard retrospective advice, following his deposition by Henry VI in 1399...
and Mum and the SothseggerMum and the SothseggerMum and the Sothsegger is an anonymous fifteenth century alliterative English poem, written during the "Alliterative Revival." It is ostensibly an example of medieval debate poetry between the principles of the oppressive figure of Mum and the unruly, wild Sothsegger .-Content:Beneath...
, both written about 1405, are usually thought to be by the same author and perhaps two parts of a single work. W. W. SkeatWalter William SkeatWalter William Skeat , English philologist, was born in London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at King's College School , Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860. His grandsons include the noted palaeographer T. C...
attributed them to Langland himself. - The Crowned King (1415)
Less directly and self-consciously evocative of Piers Plowman are:
- Jack UplandJack UplandJack Upland or Jack up Lande is a polemical, probably Lollard, literary work which can be seen as a "sequel" to Piers Plowman, with Antichrist attacking Christians through corrupt confession...
, a Lollard satire written about 1389-1396 - Responsiones ad Questiones LXV and Friar Daw's Reply, two anti-Lollard retorts to Jack Upland
- Upland's Rejoinder, a Lollard retort to Friar Daw's Reply
- I-blessyd Be Cristes Sonde, sometimes wrongly referred to as God Speed the Plough
16th and 17th centuries
(Unless otherwise noted, dates given here refer to the year when the work was first printed.)Many of the previously mentioned plowman texts, which first circulated in manuscript, reappeared later in print, often with some degree of intentional alteration and editorializing that aimed at construing them as proto-Protestant. This is true also of the first printed editions of Piers Plowman in 1550 and 1561 by Robert Crowley
Robert Crowley (printer)
Robert Crowley also Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole, and Crule , was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles at Frankfurt...
and Owen Rogers. William Tyndale
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
may have (and was thought by some contemporaries) to have supplied the preface to the printed edition of the Praier and Complaynte, which aroused the critical pen of Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
. John Foxe
John Foxe
John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
did his part to canonize the same text in four editions of his famous Actes and Monuments
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, more accurately Acts and Monuments, is an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian church history and martyrology...
from 1570 to 1610. Like Jack Upland, The Plowman's Tale became associated with Geoffrey Chaucer and was added by various editors to four editions of Chaucer's collected works between 1542 and 1602. I Playne Piers which Cannot Flatter, a mixture of parts of The Plowman's Tale and new material added some time after 1540, was printed in 1550 and ascribed to the author of Piers Plowman who was then unknown or identified as either Chaucer, John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
, or Robert Langland. I Playne Piers was reprinted by the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
Martinist writers in the Martin Marprelate
Martin Marprelate
Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts which circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589...
Controversy in 1589. It was then retitled, O read me, for I am of great antiquitie . . . I am the Gransier of Martin Mare-prelitte.
There were also many new texts produced in the sixteenth century that may be considered parts of the Piers Plowman tradition, such as Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
's The Shepheardes Calendar which makes use of a character named "Piers" and consciously borrows lines from The Plowman's Tale. Spenser's character, Colin Clout, who appears in two of his poems, is also a Piers-like figure derived from John Skelton
John Skelton
John Skelton, also known as John Shelton , possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet.-Education:...
. John Bale
John Bale
John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
regarded Skelton as a vates pierius - poetic prophet, with pierius perhaps alluding to Piers, the pre-eminent English prophet-poet. Bale was pleased with Skelton's attacks on the clergy and his open breach of clerical celibacy. Colin Clout (1521) is one of Skelton's anti-Wolsey satires where the title character, a vagabond, complains about corrupt churchmen.
Sixteenth-century texts that refer to the poem Piers Plowman or the character "Piers Plowman" include:
- The Banckett of Iohan the Reve unto Peirs Ploughman, Laurens laborer, Thomlyn tailer and Hobb of the hille with others (British Library MS Harley 207) was written c. 1532. In it, Jacke Jolie, a Protestant, quotes reformers, including Martin LutherMartin LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
, on the EucharistEucharistThe Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
. A Catholic Piers defends the Roman doctrine. - Jack of the NorthJack of the NorthJack of The North identifies an otherwise untitled, short dialogue responding to and supporting anti-enclosure actions in Cambridgeshire in 1549, the year before Kett's Rebellion. The text is printed in Charles Henry Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, which names the source as "Dr. Lamb's Cambridge...
, an anti-enclosureEnclosureEnclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
dialogue written c. 1549. - A Godly Dyalogue and Dysputacyion Betwene Pyers Plowman and a Popysh Preest concernyng the supper of the lorde (c. 1550)
- Thomas ChurchyardThomas ChurchyardThomas Churchyard , English author, was born at Shrewsbury, the son of a farmer.-Life:Churchyard received a good education, and, having speedily dissipated at court the money with which his father provided him, he entered the household of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey...
’s The Contention...upon David Dycers Dreame (c. 1551-52) - Possibly by Robert CrowleyRobert Crowley (printer)Robert Crowley also Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole, and Crule , was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles at Frankfurt...
, Pyers Plowmans Exhortation unto the Lordes, Knightes, and Burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse (c. 1550) - George GascoigneGeorge GascoigneGeorge Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...
, The Fruites of Warre (1575) and The Steel Glas (1576), uses but complicates the tradition. Piers becomes an ambivalent figure capable of self-interest and vice; he is no longer a pure, idealized character. Gascoigne satirizes corrupt clergy and elites as well as the "innocent" plowman types whose complaints are motivated by the same self-interest. Rampant individualism transcends all social divisions. - Possibly by Francis ThynneFrancis ThynneFrancis Thynne was an officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. Thynne was born in Kent, the son of William Thynne, who was Master of the Household of King Henry VIII. He attended Tonbridge School. Francis Thynne was an antiquary before being admitted to the College of Arms after several...
, Newes from the North Otherwise called the Conference between Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman (1579) - Possibly by William KempeWilliam KempeWilliam Kempe , also spelt Kemp, was an English actor and dancer specializing in comic roles and best known for having been one of the original players in early dramas by William Shakespeare...
and Edward AlleynEdward AlleynEdward Alleyn was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of Dulwich College and Alleyn's School.-Early life:...
, A Merry Knack to Know a Knave (1594), a late Elizabethan morality play in which Piers Plowman is introduced by Honesty and complains to the king about unjust landlords. When it was performed on 11 June 1592, a riot broke out in the audience; this led to the City Council's order that all theatres be closed until September. Another play, A knack to know an honest man (1596) is probably a response; it involves shepherds and was printed by John Danter, Thomas Nashe's printer.
Less directly associated with Piers are:
- God Spede the PloughGod Spede the PloughGod Spede the Plough is the name of an early 16th-century manuscript poem which borrows twelve stanzas from Geoffrey Chaucer's Monk's Tale....
- A Lytell Geste how the Plowman lerned his Pater Noster (c. 1510), printed by Wynkyn de WordeWynkyn de WordeWynkyn de Worde was a printer and publisher in London known for his work with William Caxton, and is recognized as the first to popularize the products of the printing press in England....
and in circulation as late as 1560 and 1582. In it a Catholic priest is the figure of right religion while the plowman is an avaricious ignoramus. Perhaps broad sympathy for this point of view explains why Piers Plowman was not printed until 1550. - Of Gentylnes and Nobylyte: A dyaloge betwene the marchaunt the knyght and the plowman dysputyng who is a verey gentylman and who is a noble man and how men shuld come to auctoryte, compiled in a maner of an enterlude, or the Dialogue of the Gentleman and Plowman... (1525). This is a dramatic work that is often mistitled as the Dialogue of the Gentleman and Plowman. Its printer, John RastellJohn RastellJohn Rastell was an English printer and author.-Life:Born in London, he is vaguely reported by Anthony à Wood to have been "educated for a time in grammaticals and philosophicals" at Oxford. He became a member of Lincoln's Inn, and practised successfully as a barrister. He was also M.P...
, or John HeywoodJohn HeywoodJohn Heywood was an English writer known for his plays, poems, and collection of proverbs. Although he is best known as a playwright, he was also active as a musician and composer, though no works survive.-Life:...
may have been the author. In the dialogue, the plowman takes over and wins the debate, arguing for individual merit based on inner virtue. In the process, the plowman critically examines the bases of the wealth of the landed aristocracy. - A Proper Dialogue Between A Gentleman and a HusbandmanA Proper Dialogue Between A Gentleman and a HusbandmanA proper dyaloge betwene a Gentilman and a Husbandman eche complaynynge to other their miserable calamite through the ambicion of the clergye was printed in two versions by "Hans Luft" of Antwerp in 1529...
(1529 and 1530), mixes fourteenth and fifteenth-century Lollard texts with contemporary Protestant material. - The Pilgrim's TaleThe Pilgrim's TaleThe Pilgrim's Tale is an English anti-monastic poem. It was probably written ca. 1536–38, since it makes references to events in 1534 and 1536 — i.e., the Lincolnshire Rebellion — and borrows from The Plowman's Tale and the 1532 text by William Thynne of Chaucer's Romaunt of the...
(c. 1530s) - John Bon and Mast ParsonJohn Bon and Mast ParsonJohn Bon and mast parson is a literary work printed in 1547 or 1548 by John Day and William Seres as the work of "Lucas Shepeherd", possibly a pseudonym....
(1547 or 1548) - Barnabe GoogeBarnabe GoogeBarnabe Googe or Gooche was a poet and translator, one of the earliest English pastoral poets.-Early life:...
, Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes (1563) - The Kalender of Shepardes (c. 1570), translated from the French by Robert Copland.
- A Pedlar's Tale to Queen Elizabeth (1578-90?) A play in which the main character is an itinerant laborer with prophetic, satirical analysis and advice for elites regarding social ills.
- Death and the Five Alls, an illustrated broadside depicting the plowman as the pillar of society.
- A Compendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne Ordinary Complaints, first published in 1581. Reprinted in 1583 as De Republica Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England. Attributed to Sir Thomas Smith as well as William StaffordWilliam StaffordWilliam Edgar Stafford was an American poet and pacifist, and the father of poet and essayist Kim Stafford. He was appointed the twentieth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970....
and John HalesJohn Hales (d.1571)John Hales was an English writer, administrator and politician.-Life:A son of Thomas Hales of Hales Place, Halden, Kent, Hales was brought up by Christopher Hales, who was an uncle or else a more distant relation. Without a university education, he learned Latin, Greek, French, and German...
. It discusses history and economic conditions under Edward VI. Depicts a complaining farmer/husbandman in a dialogue with a doctor who tells him to rethink his old-fashioned ideas about the agricultural economy. Outlines English social hierarchy: 1) gentlemen, 2) citizens and burgesses, 3) yeomen, 4) the fourth sort of people who do not rule. Affirms orthodox opinion that it is not for the commons to discuss or influence public matters and policy; they are politically disenfranchied within a paternalistic system which is nevertheless undercut by acknowledgment of their power even as it is denied. The common yeoman is identified as distinct from the rogue; it is the yeoman who forms the basis of English society and economy. Yet he is not to be compared to gentlemen on the basis of wit, conduct or power. The Yeomen are numerous, obedient, strong, able to endure hardship, and courageous. (I.e., they make excellent, loyal, patriotic conscripts.) - An Almanac for 1582 predicts the commons will be "factious...quarrelous, impatient, and outragious, one envying the estate and degree of another: as the poor the rich, the ploughman the gentleman."
- John HarveyJohn Harvey-People:*John Harvey , English stage and film actor*John Harvey , American actor*John Harvey , Retired National Football League running back...
, A Discorsive Problem concerning the Prophecies, How far they are to be valued, or credited, according to the surest rules, and directions in Divinitie, Philosophie, Astrologie and other learning (1588) states, "For how easily might I heer repeate almost infinite examples of villainous attempts, pernitious uprores, horrible mischeefes, slaughters, blasphemies, heresies, and all other indignities, and outrages, desperately committed, and perpetrated through means of such inveterate, and new broched forgeries. . . . neither shal I therefore neede to ransacke Pierce Plowmans satchell; nor to descant upon fortunes, newly collected out of the old Shepherds Kalendar..." - Richard HarveyRichard HarveyRichard Harvey is a BAFTA Award–winning British musician and composer. He is best known for his film and television soundtracks...
, Plaine Percevall the Peace-Maker of England (1590), an unsophisticated man of common-sense, Percevall attacks all the anti-Martinists but purports to settle the controversy. - Edmund SpenserEdmund SpenserEdmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
's The Faerie QueeneThe Faerie QueeneThe Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
, books 1-3 (1590) In the first book, the Redcross knight's origins are rich with multiple meanings: as a national symbol, he is St. George, England's patron saint, and Spenser stresses the humble, agricultural origins of the name George (Georgos is Greek for "farmer"). On a more individualized level, Redcrosse represents a radical social mobility, going from the plow to the queen's court. Spenser is no doubt expressing a kind of personal allegory that would resonate with other ambitious men with humble origins, but such mobility also threatens the agrarian order by eroding the fixity of the social hierarchy upheld by the earlier, conservative agrarian complaints:
Thence she thee brought into this faerie Lond,
And in an heaped furrow did thee hyde,
Where thee a Ploughman all unweeting fond,
As he his toylsome teme that way did guyde,
And brought thee up in ploughmans state to byde,
Whereof Georgos he thee gave to name;
Till prickt with courage, and thy forces pryde,
To Faery court thou cam'st to seeke for fame,
And prove thy puissant armes, as seemes thee best became.
- Robert GreeneRobert Greene (16th century)Robert Greene was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A...
, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592), the basis for a lost play performed by The Chamberlain's Men, Clothbreeches and Velvethose (1600). - Thomas NasheThomas NasheThomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...
, Pierce Pennilesse His Supplication to the Devil (1592) - Gabriel HarveyGabriel HarveyGabriel Harvey was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, though his reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe...
, Pierce's Supererogation (1593), a response to Nashe's attacks on Harvey and his brothers. - Robert WilsonRobert Wilson (dramatist)Robert Wilson , was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles....
The Cobler's Prophecy (1594), a play. - Pedler's Prophecie (1595), a play.
- Henry ChettleHenry ChettleHenry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.The son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer, he was apprenticed in 1577 and became a member of the Stationer's Company in 1584, traveling to Cambridge on their behalf in 1588. His career as a printer and author is...
, Piers Plainnes seaven yeres Prentiship In Arcadia, a picaro Piers talks about his life (much of it spent in London) to Arcadian shepherds in Tempe. He has served as an apprentice under seven bad masters (an occasion for another taxonomy of London life and vices). Giving up on the court as an exception to general corruption, Chettle's Piers follows the precedent from Virgil to Wyatt and Spenser: satisfaction will only be found in pastoral retirement. Like much other late Elizabethan prose, John LylyJohn LylyJohn Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
's EuphuesEuphues (1578)Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt published in 1578 was a didactic romance written by John Lyly and followed two years later by Euphues and his England ; the term "Euphues" is derived from Greek meaning "graceful, witty". Lyly's mannered style is characterized by parallel arrangements and...
is an obvious source of inspiration. The influence of other masterpieces of rogue literature is apparent, especially Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse and The Unfortunate TravellerThe Unfortunate TravellerThe Unfortunate Traveller: or, the Life of Jack Wilton by Thomas Nashe is a picaresque novel set during the reign of Henry VIII of England....
.
Like Thomas More and Robert Crowley, Bishop Hugh Latimer
Hugh Latimer
Hugh Latimer was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, Bishop of Worcester before the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555, under Queen Mary, he was burnt at the stake, becoming one of the three Oxford Martyrs of Anglicanism.-Life:Latimer was born into a...
valued "commune wealth" more than "private commodity." He was an outspoken critic of enclosure, the abuses of landlords, and the aristocrats who lined their pockets through the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...
. Like Crowley, Latimer was able to be especially outspoken when Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, KG, Earl Marshal was Lord Protector of England in the period between the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and his own indictment in 1549....
had controlling influence in the court as Lord Protector
Lord Protector
Lord Protector is a title used in British constitutional law for certain heads of state at different periods of history. It is also a particular title for the British Heads of State in respect to the established church...
of England during part of the minority of Edward VI
Edward VI of England
Edward VI was the King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant...
. A famous sermon of Latimer's that represented preachers as God's plowmen, "The Sermon of the Plowers," was delivered at St. Paul's Cross, 18 January 1548 and was printed that year by John Day
John Day (printer)
John Day was an English Protestant printer. He specialised in printing and distributing Protestant literature and pamphlets, and produced many small-format religious books, such as ABCs, sermons, and translations of psalms...
. This was the last of four "Sermons on the Plough;" unfortunately the first three are lost. While Latimer's message is spiritual, it has a sharp political edge that also acknowledges the material concerns of people affected by enclosure. Latimer attacks idle clergy as "plowmen" who cause a spiritual famine, and enclosure is used as a metaphor for hindrances to proper preaching. The devil is called the busiest bishop and greatest plowman in England; he is seeding the land with the ritual and ornamental trappings of popery. Latimer himself, through the style of his sermons, typifies the plain, homely and direct speech of Piers and popular Protestantism. Anthony Anderson
Anthony Anderson
Anthony Anderson is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He has starred in his own sitcom All About the Andersons, as well as the Fox sitcom The Bernie Mac Show during the fifth and final season of the show. He is also known for his leading roles in television dramas such as K-Ville, The...
's The Shield of our Safetie (1581) uses Latimer's figure of the pastor as a plowman but is unwilling to ascribe special virtue to the commons and rural laborers. Godliness is lacking "from top to toe" in England, "from the Nobilitie, to the Plowman and his mate." George Gifford
George Gifford
George Gifford was a Puritan preacher at Maldon, Essex.-Life:Gifford was born in Dry Drayton, near Cambridge and attended Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1570 and MA in 1573. He afterwards lived at Maldon, but was discharged from the priesthood for refusing to subscribe to Archbishop...
's A Briefe Discourse of Certaine Points of the Religion which is among the Common Sort of Christians (1583) asserts that "it is not for plowmen to meddle with scriptures."
Trends and influences
The early modern dissemination and reception of Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman ("William's Vision of Piers Plowman") from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century is quite complex and reveals a great deal about changes in English society and politics. Clearly orthodox Roman Catholic in doctrine but reformist in that it posed social criticism and advocated moral, economic, and political change in the English church and nation, the original poem(s)--and the figure of Piers in the popular imagination--could be and indeed were viewed in many different ways over time, depending upon the historical and ideological vantage point of its various readers and the forms in which its texts paratexts were disseminated.Like Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and a theologian....
and his work, Piers was open to being appropriated by Lollards and later Protestant reformers. William Tyndale
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
's memorable statement to a "popish priest," recorded in John Foxe
John Foxe
John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
' Acts and Monuments
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, more accurately Acts and Monuments, is an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian church history and martyrology...
, is an echo of Erasmus' Paraclesis, which also resonated with popular images of the pious plowman: "If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the scripture than thou dost." Earlier, Erasmus had written, in his introduction to his Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, "Would that, as a result [of vernacular translations and the setting of scripture to popular tunes], the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow." (Elsewhere Tyndale is closer to Erasmus: "I wold to god the plowman wold singe a text of the scripture at his plowbeme...") Similarly, the text of Piers and the figure of the English plowman developed from a reformist Catholic identity toward a much more revolutionary, first Wycliffite (i.e., Lollard), then more anti-Roman Catholic, Protestant identity which could be and indeed was turned against perceived abuses in the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
and English society in general.
However, just as C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
cautions against viewing Tyndale and Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
as "the representatives respectively of an old and new order," there is more continuity than discontinuity between the Catholic and Protestant, medieval and Renaissance/Reformation versions of Piers. Like Tyndale and More, as Lewis writes, "both inveighed against enclosure
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
and sheep-farming and demanded that the desires of the 'economic man' should be completely subordinated to traditional Christian ethics." To Tyndale and More, Lewis remarks, "what they had in common doubtless seemed a mere 'highest common factor...'" As the chief emblem of what Tyndale, More, and others like them had in common, the figure of Piers and the plowman--with their shifting guises in the sixteenth century--is an index to changes in English society that were ultimately unfavorable to the social vision that Piers originally stood for.
After nearly two centuries, the plowman tradition of social complaint and satire became more Chaucerian
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
and less Langlandian
William Langland
William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
to the extent that it turned more worldly-wise, if not cynical, and less ardently idealistic or concerned with the pursuit of the pure principle and reality of social justice. It became, increasingly, a secular vehicle for lampooning and complaining about class rivalries and political dissent--and also for containing or restraining such things. What is notable about the Piers/plowman literature of the Elizabethan era (barring a few exceptions) is the absence of the old religious radical who speaks the plain truth for the poor, godly commons against corrupt elites and dissembling, hypocritical English clergy. In many cases the name of Piers remained current, but his vocation generally was altered; with few exceptions, he was no longer a religious reformer. In fact he tended to become a more secular figure. There were still some rare appearances of the old Piers, but in general it seems that as a traditional "voice of the people," he had to change. This is not to say that Piers became apolitical or even less political, although that may be the case among writers like Gascoigne who point to universal corruption and mock the idea behind much plowman literature that the lowly are intrinsically virtuous. For those who did not reject the tradition, it seems that Piers became less an idealist and more of a pragmatist with a more nuanced view of English society. Criticism of the wealthy and powerful continued, but rather than directly addressing complaints to them and to the mnonarch and parliament as Edwardians like Crowley, Latimer and Thomas Lever
Thomas Lever
Thomas Lever was an English Protestant reformer and Marian exile, one of the founders of the Puritan tendency in the Church of England.-Life:...
had done, they became the subject of comic, often satiric, popular entertainment. Plays and pamphlets became the vehicle of social analysis, concerned with class identities and rivalries that were rendered with greater complexity and detail than in found in the earlier literature.
Before this shift, Langland's old political-religious-moral animus and the desire for social justice was close to that of social-minded evangelicals of the early and mid-Tudor era who advocated for the re/formation of a godly commonwealth
Commonwealth
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with "republic."More recently it has been used for fraternal associations of some sovereign nations...
. But unlike the medieval and early to mid sixteenth-century Piers, his Elizabethan successors discarded the comprehensive, reformist vision underwritten by belief in a theocentric social norm. To an extent this was because the Reformation officially had ended in the eyes of the queen and others who accepted the Elizabethan Religious Settlement
Elizabethan Religious Settlement
The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was Elizabeth I’s response to the religious divisions created over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559", was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England...
. Censorship laws had been put into effect in 1551, 1553, and 1559, officially banning discussion of religious matters or matters of state. Nevertheless, the Crown was probably unable and unwilling to enforce these laws completely, especially in the case of texts that favored (or sufficiently appeared to favor) its interests--e.g., The Cobler's Prophecy. Radical Puritans who might sympathize with the older Piers as a critic of the established church-state were quite politically incorrect under the Elizabethan establishment and open to--at the least--accusations of naiveté. Other causes were also at work. With the division and collapse of Christendom
Christendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
in the Reformation, the medieval conception of the social hierarchy, as well as Purgatory
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
and Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, so central to Langland's poem, were vestigial remnants of a passing order. They no longer had a coherence that could support and explain material, political realities as, say, Machiavelli could to the official and often real shock and dismay of the pious. Nor did they retain much spiritual purchase on men's lives once Protestant solafidian
Sola fide
Sola fide , also historically known as the doctrine of justification by faith alone, is a Christian theological doctrine that distinguishes most Protestant denominations from Catholicism, Eastern Christianity, and some in the Restoration Movement.The doctrine of sola fide or "by faith alone"...
theology altered the fear of Hell and largely eliminated the penitential mentality of Langland's more medieval Catholic world. Even in Piers Plowman one may see, in retrospect, all these outcomes as emerging possibilities.
In the Elizabethan era, Piers' Christological aspect became fully detached from and eclipsed by his role as the universal commoner, a secular economic man among economic men with clashing interests. At the same time, there was a bifurcation of the original, more unitary, carnivalesque
Carnivalesque
Carnivalesque is an traces the origins of the carnivalesque to the concept of carnival, itself related to the Feast of Fools, a medieval festival originally of the sub-deacons of the cathedral, held about the time of the Feast of the Circumcision , in which the humbler cathedral officials...
world of Langland's Piers that is interpenetrated by common, aristocratic, and divine characters. Just as in rival high vs. lower class representations of Chaucer at the same time, the emerging divisions of private and public, sacred and secular, this bifurcation was articulated in terms of social class categories that were then emerging in force, much as Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...
observes in Rabelais and His World
Rabelais and His World
During World War II Mikhail Bakhtin submitted a dissertation on the French Renaissance writer François Rabelais which was not defended until some years later. The controversial ideas discussed within the work caused much disagreement, and it was consequently decided that Bakhtin be denied his...
. The idea of the nation as a "commonwealth" became strained even in the Edwardian era when its (and Piers') ultimately recalcitrant enemies were construed less as abstract vices to be opposed by virtue but more specifically as the policies and practices of landlords, nobles, kings and "private men." The moral and apocalyptic aspects of Piers flourished briefly at mid-century but then dissipated along with the idealism of the Edwardian reformers and their vision of a united commonwealth of interdependent estates. Popular literature evoking Piers by name or in spirit began to construe elites as people with whom one may compete--and win. Langland's "fair field of folk" became a socioeconomic playing field on which elites are perhaps no less important (or even, in fact, less important) to the nation than the common people. In this way Langland's Piers and Piers-like figures helped establish an English national identity based on and for the popular rather than the elite culture. This popular self-understanding seems to have flourished especially in the nonconformist Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
mind where it could be radicalized. In other cases, it could be a basis for statist nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
According to the Privy Council, military conscription, which was at a high in the late sixteenth century, gave "great ease and good to the country to be ridd of those kinde of people whoe otherwyse wil be a burthen to the country." Such attempts to channel and appropriate the power of the commoners did not escape their notice. In Pierce Pennilesse, Thomas Nashe wrote, "If they have no service abroad, they will make mutinies at home..." Shakespeare's Henry IV similarly advises "busy[ing] giddy minds / With foreign quarrels." Popular awareness of such strategies to channel the (publicly denied) power of the commons toward royal interests did not generate resistance so much as an opportunity for the commons to insert their own interests into the transaction. Perhaps this is why in the Elizabethan era, Piers and Piers-like figures began to appear as itinerant laborers and tradesmen: tinkers, coblers and shoemakers who claimed to represent true Englishness over against effete, pretentious elites. While affirming their loyalty, these humble figures labored to define an English identity from below that was drawn from native, popular traditions going back to Langland and Chaucer. To the extent that the popular opposition between plain and ornate, honest and dissembling was associated with courtiers, (South European) foreignness and Catholicism, the plowman tradition continued to be anti-Catholic and staunchly Protestant. (As a political sensibility and a means of relating to a larger society, much of this mindset has endured, particularly in the United States where it still has a clear link to Protestantism.)
This popular image of the English commonwealth is frequently defined in the Elizabethan era in opposition to Catholic nations (i.e., France and Spain, notably) and "Rome," which are represented as less free and unvirtuous. Hutchins notes that "Even in the most unremittingly absolutist interpretations of Tudor theories of rule, the qualities that Elizabethans claim make a good ruler include dignified concern for the common people" (229). Popular plowman literature constantly reasserts this view: English society is based on its regard for its foundation in the commons. This idea can both empower and co-opt the power of the common people, however. Shakespeare's Henry V exhibits plain, soldierly behavior that allows him to level social distinctions between him and his men in his St. Crispin's day pep-talk before the battle of Agincourt: "He to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition" (4.3.60-67). In the same year of Shakespeare's play (1599), Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday depicted cobblers at home in England while the king is fighting in France. The cobblers declare their lowly nobility, and the hero, Simon Eyre, becomes Mayor of London--another image of tenuously levelled class distinctions at odds with social realities. (See Hobsbawm, Hutchins, Ayers, Dollimore and Sinfield, McEachern, Neill, Kastan, Maynard, Straznicky, and Stevenson.)
As a sturdy working-class fellow in the popular culture, it is not surprising that Piers never made it into the works of the elite writers who predominate in the English literary canon. Aristocrats, like Sir Philip Sidney
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
, disdained the imitation of Chaucer for his old, uncouth language, which is a judgment based in class prejudice as much as aesthetics. Moreover, Piers was even more archaic and parochial, with the added notoriety of political subversiveness and (now illegal) prophecy. University educated, aspiring courtier-writers with poorer, often rural, backgrounds (e.g., Spenser and Harvey) may have been uneasy with a tradition that sometimes cast a cold eye on the lives and ambitions of upwardly mobile urbanites like themselves. Others, like Greene and Nashe, would exploit this anxiety and use the plowman tradition in order to lampoon would-be courtiers like Harvey, who took the attack very personally. In Nashe we find a new Piers, Pierce Pennilesse, who represents the young London malcontent writer who desires but lacks patronage and recognition of his talent. While this literature is far removed from the straightforward religious and political criticisms of Crowley and others, writers like Nashe and Greene were still finding ways to use the old moral-satirical tradition to expose and attack--or just laugh at--vices directly related to contemporary social and political conditions.
Sources
- Aston, Margaret, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion. London: Hambledon Press, 2003.
- Barr, Helen., ed. The Piers Plowman Tradition. London: Everyman’s Library, 1993.
- Dean, James M. "Plowman Writings: Introduction", in Medieval English Political Writings, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996 – covers Song of the Husbandman, God Spede the Plough, I-blessyd Be Cristes Sonde, and Chaucer's Plowman
- DiMarco, Vincent, Piers Plowman: A Reference Guide Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
- Hudson, Anne, 'Epilogue: The Legacy of Piers Plowman', in A Companion to Piers Plowman, ed. John A. Alford. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 251-66.
- Rydzeski, Justine, 'Radical Nostalgia in the Age of Piers Plowman: Economics, Apocalypticism, and Discontent' in Studies in the Humanities: Literature-Politics-Society vol 48 Peter Lang, 1999
- Tawney, R. H.R. H. TawneyRichard Henry Tawney was an English economic historian, social critic, Christian socialist, and an important proponent of adult education....
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) - Tawney, R. H. and Eileen Power, eds. Tudor Economic Documents: Being Select Documents Illustrating the Economic and Social History of Tudor England 3 vols. (1924)