In virtually every reaffirmation of the Statute, Parliament describes leaving one’s home, the place where one should “serve” at agricultural labor, as the primary means of evading the intended wage freezes. In the original ordinance, promulgated by the royal council, rather than Parliament, laborers “who depart from the same Service without reasonable Cause or License, before the Term agreed,” are to be jailed (23 Edw. III, c. 2; SR 1:307); subsequent enactments offer more explicit comments on evasive, especially out-of-shire wandering (e.g. 25 Edw. III, c. 2.2 and 7, SR 1:312–13; 34 Edw. III, c. 10, SR 1:367). Moreover, Parliament perceives London and other boroughs as providing attractive refuges for such runaway laborers; London officials are specifically enjoined to enforce the Statute (31 Edw. III, c. 1.7; SR 1:350), and Parliament wishes mayors of any borough fined if they fail to surrender fugitive laborers to their rightful masters (34 Edw. III, c. 11; SR 1:367).
9 but drynke and slepe: The latter, of course, defines the métier of the poem, the behavior by which the poet claims to get his material. But his drinking associates him with the poem’s most ubiquitous social misfits, equally poets and equally tavern loungers who share his disinclination for labor (cf. 57, an echo of Prol.36). For discussion of the tavern and its poetry, see 28n, 6.350–441n; and for the C version efforts at constructing a licit minstrelsy, 7.81–118n. Again, the description answers the Statute of Laborers: Parliament fears that those who refuse labor service are utterly dissolute, “having … regard to … their Ease and singular Covetise,” as 25 Edw. III, c. 2 (SR 1:311) puts it.
10 unnit: RK’s emendation (explained p. 159; the word means “uselessness”—its last MED citation c. 1225) should be rejected in favor of the manuscript reading inwitt; cf. Salter and Pearsall’s gloss, “(While I was) in this state of health and good understanding.” Rather than being openly provocative, Will admits he has no excuses to offer for his conduct, and his locution is precise—echoed at 9.116 in the description of “lunatic lollers.” At this moment, he has no claim to what he later will try to construct as a sanctified status.
11 Romynge in remembraunce: The phrase, of course, modifies me; as usual, Will is lost in idle motion, rambling. His behavior, rather than forming a self-critical penitential survey of his past, more closely resembles the king’s charge to Meed, “ay the lengur y late the go, the lasse treuthe is with the” (3.137). But see also 94–101, in accord with the honorific echo of 13.4: “ay þe lengere [Jesus and the apostles] lyuede, the lasse goed they hadde.” As Holychurch implies (1.138–44), memory is the way Will should rediscover the “kynde knowyng(e)” that would lead him to Truth. Here, without direction, memory leads Will, not to anything like amendment, but to a merely repetitive self-indulgence. Such romynge, which he shares with the sins who confess in the next passus, allows him to view his life always through retrospect, in terms of his initial hopes, rather than a realistic assessment of their failures (see 35–52) and produces the promise of compulsive repetition of the same activities that concludes the scene (see 94–98L). Middleton (1988:247–50, 1990:47–48) offers provocative comments on this penitential memory; the associations she draws with Imaginative suggest that L moves forward to this point in C materials he had discovered later in extending the B version (and she gives a rationale for the suppression of B 12.16–28). Particularly given the formulation of the issues there, Fletcher presents (2002) as analogous activities what are, in the poem’s argument, opposed ones. Mum 858, “Rolling in remembrance my rennyng aboute,” echoes the line.
——— resoun me aratede: One should note the echo of line 5 above, and the deliberate adjustment of the metrical emphasis here. The dramatic situation looks ahead to 13.183–212, when Reason will again arate the dreamer (cf. further 15.26–27, 16.158 and 177). In that passage, Will again defends a preexisting and questionable state; there are further parallels in the behavior of the wasters at 8.131–38 (who attempt to shroud themselves in claims resembling those Will makes at 84). For Reason’s role here, see 23–25n.
12–21 Reason on tasks: Labor issues are particularly important in the second vision and emanate from Holychurch’s injunctions at 1.84–87. In those terms, L here assesses the relationship of his dreamer’s hands and tongue: has he a legitimate laboring biography that Holychurch would find fit material for a poem?
Reason’s interrogation asks Will to demonstrate his involvement in a “craft þat to þe comune nedeth” (20). But this legal figure conceives his totalizing social model, for reasons that will shortly become apparent, as the activities of the agricultural village (cf. Middleton 1997:229–34, 248); thus, this listing has a muted echo in Piers’s first speech, 7.186–92. These activities or offices he identifies in a language that reflects, to a large extent, legal terminology, that embedded in the Statute of Laborers. Thus, 14–15 Mowen … Repe echo the first promulgation of the Statute, “if any Reaper, Mower, or other Workman or Servant … depart” (23 Edw. III, c. 2; SR 1:307). For similar synecdoche, by which one prominent craft may stand for all, see 61–69n below, Prol.143–46, 7.182–204n.
Later versions of the legislation provide richer vocabulary, which L also appropriates. In this case, statute language is very likely derived from the recommended sequence of manorial officers in the treatise on estate management, the Seneschaucy, ed. Oschinsky, 261–95: “Carters, Ploughmen, Drivers of the Plough, Shepherdes, Swineherds, Deies” and “Oxherd, Cowherd” (25 Edw. III, c. 1; 12 Rich. II, c. 4, which sets specific wages; SR 1:311, 2:57). Since the Statutes also freeze wages for artisans and victuallers, they include references to those who shap shon or cloth 18 as well (e.g., 23 Edw. III, c. 5; 25 Edw. III, c. 2.4; SR 1:308 and 312).
In seeking to hold the dreamer to “eny other kynes craft þat to þe comune nedeth,” Reason places the interrogation specifically in the context of the 1388 Statute of Laborers. In this legislation, Parliament mandates harvest-time impressment of the able-bodied (cf. constrayne 54 and constringitur 60L), even if they are not agricultural laborers by trade. In Parliament’s view, the common need at this season is primarily for field workers, and this need overrides other professional considerations. “Artificers and People of Mystery as Servants and Apprentices, which be of no great Avoyr, and of which Craft or Mystery a Man hath no great Need in harvest Time (aust “August”?), shall be compelled to serve in Harvest, to cut, gather, and bring in the Corn” (12 Rich. II, c. 3; SR 2:56). In this context, line 18 by using the verb shap, probably indicates a trained craftsman, who can produce without aid or supervision, as distinct from an apprentice. Baldwin (1981:59, 101n9) was the first to indicate that Reason’s interrogation partly accords with the 1388 statute.
12 Can thow seruen … or syngen: Although the line is certainly an embarrassment for Will, it provides a necessary first interrogation under the Statutes for a person who looks like him. Since the Statute covers only agricultural “Servants and Labourers,” priests attached to specific clerical occupations are generally exempt from its provisions (although see 52n). The distinction, however, is one that the embattled dreamer will turn back on Reason in lines 54–67. For the precise force inherent in Can thow (Do you know how to?), see 35–44n. For a different perspective, emphasizing a broader concept of Christian service, see Knowles 2010 and cf. 7.185n.
14 mywen: Apparently not recorded elsewhere, the verb must be distinguished from Mowen at the head of the line. It most likely represents a causative formation with sense “to put hay into cocks,” derived from an unrecorded OE *mīewan (< mēow, pt. of māwan). Cf. Donaldson 1990:244/13 “stack what’s mown” and the cokeres of the preceding line.
15 rypereue: Homans