Some such training may lie behind various of the dreamer’s antics in early sections of the search for Dowel. For example, at 10.20, he adopts a manner that he identifies as clerk[ly] (while implying that he is not such a person). Moreover, his performance there shows some knowledge (not extending either to a full citation of the Bible or to a deep understanding of syllogistic technique) of scholarly disputation (cf. his use of the verb dispute, routinely at this time referring to scholarly debate, as apposen does in some instances, perhaps 1.45 or B 3.5, more likely line 10 above or B 7.144).
Of course, Will’s reported biography does not go very far toward absolving him of Reason’s charges. The labor he claims as appropriately his own is only the residue of higher family plans for him, plans that were never fully completed (cf. the plaintive echo foend 40). Romynge in remembraunce only returns him to that previous frustration, and he cannot imagine an alternative to continuing to be what he was—but no longer licitly is. The case of Covetise, and his youthful fyndynge, provides an instructive parallel; see 6.206–20n and 215n. And further afield, as Middleton (1990:74) argues, the Lollard William Thorpe in 1407 frames his apologia in strikingly similar terms: Thorpe and Will share a common inability to conceive of themselves as anything other than what they originally were. In constructing the entire situation, L may well recall the dire warnings of W&W 7–9: “Dare neuer no westren wy … | Send his sone southewarde to see ne to here | That he ne schall holden byhynde when he hore eldes.”
However, such activity is not quite enough to exculpate the wandering dreamer under the 1388 Statute. For even had he stayed in school long enough to be a university scholar, he could not legally wander to beg without a license. 12 Rich. II, c. 7 (SR 2:58) requires him to carry a testimonial letter from his chancellor; see further 89–91n.
38 as the boek telleth: This off-verse might well be read as an ironic jibe at the alliterative tradition. In such poetry, this is perhaps the most widely attested second half-line, in the great majority of instances a pure throwaway filler; in contrast, for Will, the boek, Holy Scripture, provides the total justification for his activities.
39 by so y wol contenue: RK connect the clause with what precedes, and Skeat and Pearsall1 gloss “provided that I will persevere (in well-doing).” But they ignore the further development, 43–43L, lines that address perseverance directly as vocation. Thus, Galloway (1992:94) plausibly argues for a full stop at mid-line; he would translate, “I wish to continue in this manner,” that is, behave like a scholar all my life. Conscience echoes the line in 104.
The passage hovers between honesty and self-indulgence. The impersonal lykede 41 makes it “not my fault” yet simultaneously asserts “I ought to be able to do what is pleasing to me,” and the concessive 42 “Yf y be laboure sholde lyuen” suggests that hand-work is a responsibility Will would rather not be stuck with.
41 longe clothes: See 2n above.
43L In eadem … : 1 Cor. 7:20 (Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was called) and Eph. 4:1, in the first case (ironically enough, given line 2), part of Paul’s rather crabby discussion of wedlock. Once again, biblical and legal discourse reinforce one another; see 35–44n above. Wimbledon cites this verse (lines 98–100) to indicate the integrity of each estate—and the impermissibility of blending them; more distantly, cf. Shakespeare’s Falstaff, at 1 Henry IV 1.2.91–92.
44 in london and vp london bothe: Will reverts to Statute concerns. Again (as in line 10) RK insert an overly provocative reading (explained p. 154), here from the p manuscripts. But the x reading and opelond bothe (“in the country, too”) is preferable, not least because it alludes to—and defends the dreamer against—the most crucial regulations promulgated by the 1388 Parliament. In the effort to arrest what it perceived as vagrancy to avoid agricultural labor, Parliament established a system of internal passports. Not only is a laborer required to serve, but once his contract ends, he cannot leave his home hundred, “unless he bring a Letter Patent containing the cause of his going, and the Time of his Return, if he ought to return, under the King’s Seal” (12 Rich. II, c. 3; SR 2:56).
Through his inspecificity about his domicile, london and opelond bothe, Will hopes to place himself outside statutory penalties. He clearly has no sealed license to roam, no warrant for his activities—like Hawkin he constitutes “an [eremitic] ordre by hymselue” (B 13.284; see 91n). Thus he should be treated like “any Servant or Labourer found in any City or Borough [cf. 1n above for statutory suspicions about such locales] or elsewhere coming from any Place, wandering without such Letter”: “he shall be maintenant taken … and put in the Stocks, and kept till he hath found Surety to return to his Service, or to Serve or labour in the Town from which he came” (12 Rich. II, c. 3; SR 2:56, my emphasis). Since the dreamer, although certainly out of place, can claim no fixed locale where he “serves,” even in the absence of a license, he cannot be punished, deported as it were, under the Statute.
45–52 The lomes … my wombe one: The dreamer’s education avowedly is his past; now he proceeds to outline his current way of life. In his last speech, he implicitly described himself as the dishonest steward of Luke 16. As he now tries to indicate how he retains a fyndyng (cf. line 49), even if not one from the now deceased “lynage ryche” Reason expected (see 26), Will quickly transforms himself from dishonest steward into other gospel characters. The steward, fearing he has lost his office, undertakes a program of chicanery, “mak[ing] friends of the mammon of iniquity” by writing off debts owed his lord. This is a deliberate program, “that when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses” (Luke 16:4); it resembles the risky chaffer Will will describe at 94–101.
But equally, Will’s vocation echoes—most trenchantly in line 52—Jesus’ instructions to his followers (Luke 9, 10; first noted Clopper 1989:276). He deliberately seeks to present himself in an apostolic status that may answer English labor law: “The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few” (Luke 10:2). Will claims to live by his prayers, supported by those for whose good estate and eternal well-being he importunes God. In this process, he behaves as Imaginative had told him to (at B 12.16–17) and resembles the ideal priest: “a Porthors … sholde be his Plow, Placebo to sigge” (B 15.125, there as a rebuke to an armed priest, cf. lines 57–58 below). Thus, he has interests in God’s kingdom comparable to those of his evangelical forebears. He is paid for this effort in food and follows a regular rotation of visits among his employers; his behavior thus accords with Jesus’ injunctions, “eating and drinking such things as they have,” “eat such things as are set before you” (Luke 10:7, 8, the first cited 15.44L)—although he ignores commands against wandering house to house (Luke 10:5–7).
Further, line 52 distinguishes the bagless dreamer from the “bidding [wheedling? or, like Will, praying?] beggars” of Prol.41–42; cf. 8.128n. For these figures, bag and belly are indistinguishable. L returns to this topic again at 9.98–104, 119–25L (see the notes there), 139–40, 151–58. Throughout this later passage, possession of the external trappings of a beggar damns the man who carries them, ipso facto; in contrast, to lack bag and bottle is to be perfectly apostolic: “Take nothing for your journey; neither staff, nor scrip, nor bread, nor money” (Luke 9:3; for the “staff,” cf. 9.159n). Perhaps particularly important, given Will’s aggressive turn on Reason at line 53, is Jesus’ command, “salute no man by the way” (Luke 10:4; cf. B 15.3–10, partly retained at 9.122–23; cf. Chaucer’s Miller, CT I.3122–23). Although he wears the habit of a lollare, Will claims to be truly apostolic, neither a gyrovague friar like penetrans domos (22.340) nor a lollare, since he does not carry a lollare’s equipment and takes no more than his day’s food (carries nothing away with him). He thus is exactly what the gospel calls a “laborer” and acquires a “measurable hire” from his patrons in return for his prayers (see Luke 10:7). Perhaps the most comparable figure elsewhere in the poem is the pilgrim Patience who “preyde mete ‘pur charite, for a pouere heremyte’ ” (B 13.30; cf. 15.32).
Donaldson (1949:208–19) pursues his autobiographical