Of course, this promise of repetition and recursion to the lost hopes of youth defines not simply a spiritual status and a biography but also the very métier of L’s poetry (cf. 1.80). Indeed the three are very nearly coterminous. At the very opening of his project, in A 1.119–20, L inscribes, through Holychurch, a Dantesque prospect that it will be possible to “enden … in perfite werkis.” But the working of the poem involves L in the discovery that he can only “ofte chaffare.” See further 1–108n.
Such chaffering marks the poem in the most large scale and most obvious ways. It determines its gross form, its incessant visioning, the repetitive effort to approach more nearly to the heart of that mystery that Will here identifies as grace itself (and the form of his identification acknowledges, of course, his distance from it). Moreover, L’s visions are not simply repetitive but recursive: each seems to begin at some point before the last had started (see, e.g., 126n, 180–90n below), and none seems to achieve finality, only a new conflicted restatement of the issues. See further Middleton 1982, Smith 2001:184–87, and 110n.
But such repeated visioning only vaguely signals the great act of recursive chaffering that L undertakes. This is the determination to write the poem over, head to end, to create Versions. Rather than some climax, some moment of prophetic vision, re-vision is the very métier of the poem and of L’s biography as the poem represents it. And, as the reader will find in the conversations parallel to 5.1–108 that comprise passus 6, such biographical re-vision and irresolvable verbal conflict proves to be the poem’s version of gracelessness, of scapegraceism, of sinful life itself.
97 sette … at a leef: Translate: “regarded … as of no consequence” (so MED lef n.1, sense 1d); apparently an allusive use of such idioms as “not worth a kres” or “not worth a leaf.” However, this sense underlies L’s common (and often provocatively placed) idiosyncratic use of leef as “bit, small part” (MED sense 2d): cf. 6.209, 15.103; B 6.254, 7.111 (the archetypal, not edited, version) and 181.
98L Simile est … dragmam: Will continues the chorus of gospel citations that began at line 86. The first text is Matt. 13:44 (The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field). Middleton comments (2013:133): “The field [Will] has obtained for development is Piers’s half-acre, and his project, idiosyncratically specified as penance by other means, now becomes his work, neither idleness nor courtly play.”
The second citation alludes to Luke 15:8–10 (the woman who finds her lost groat). Pearsall notes that this parable immediately precedes that of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32, itself juxtaposed with the dishonest steward of Luke 16) and that both express the joy in heaven over a returned sinner. An equally powerful subtext, again an adjacent citation (Matt. 13:45–46, immediately following the treasure in the field), especially relevant to line 96 and to possible connections with Pearl, would be the pearl of great price: “Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a merchant seeking good pearls. Who when he had found one pearl of great price, went his way, and sold all that he had, and bought it.” With such treasure-seeking, cf. Holychurch at 1.43–53, 79–87, 136, 202 and the notes there. All these parables describe gaining the kingdom of heaven, identifying a vocacio (43L) that eventually will achieve the hereditas (60L) the dreamer has persistently claimed.
100–101 bigynne a tyme | That alle tymes of my tyme to profit shal turne: Certainly the lines address the mysterious multiplier effects of capitalistic chaffare, whereby apparent loss, the constant outlay of investment, sometimes achieves a wondrous reward beyond expectation. Cf. for example, Jerome’s famous discussion of the multifold “fruits” of virtuous chastity, Adversus Jovinianum 1.3 (PL 23:213, and L’s tree of C 18), or in this context, its source, the parable of the sower (Matt. 13:3–23). This last, yet again, forecasts the appearance of Piers in the poem as a desired object.
Yet equally, the lines may rely upon ecclesiastical legalism. Galloway (1992:95 n4) cites a Worcester Cathedral prior’s letter refusing to release a previously supported clerk from service to the chapter; the house “for a time and times has thus brought you up.” Galloway comments, “Education is a patron’s or institution’s proprietarial investment.” Being provided with a vocation does not necessarily create one’s freedom (reward or hereditas), but a further debt and potential loss. The locution may echo, to various effects, Dan. 7:22 and 25, “tempus advenit, et regnum obtinuerunt sancti” (the time came, and the saints obtained the kingdom), “usque ad tempus, et tempora, et dimidium temporis” (until a time, and times, and half a time).
102–4 Y rede the … ywende: Just as the dreamer has retreated, his interlocutors retreat. Their surrender (a fantasy of slack enforcement without even a prerequisite Meed-like appeal) leaves the dreamer ostensibly self-justified and self-authorized as poet. Reason and Conscience perform like the lord of Luke 16, who, in a mysterious act, accepts an ostensibly heavenly economics that relies upon worldly sharp practice. Of course, the dreamer chooses to respond to Conscience’s statement, not Reason’s; it allows him to persist in past behavior (contynue) once he has entered the church.
103 louable and leele to: Translate: “profitable and appropriate for.” The first adjective fluctuates among a range of self-reinforcing meanings—praiseworthy, licit, worthy of remuneration (cf. 8.194n, B 15.4n). See the discussions of lele labour and lawe and leaute, Prol.147n and B Prol.122n, respectively.
105–11 (B 5.3–10, A 5.3–10) The dreamer sleeps again: The first four lines in the C version have replaced the transition of AB 3–8; in these versions only characters in the dream, the king and knights of his Chamber (see Given-Wilson 1986:passim, esp. 160–74, 280–86), actually go to church. Will’s repositioning in C corresponds to a potentially significant shift in tone between the versions. In AB, the dreamer is (perhaps typically) insouciant; in C, he responds immediately to Conscience’s parting command, “to þe kyrke ywende.”
In the earlier versions (AB 5.3–8), while sadder 4 forecasts the lack of steadfastness addressed in the preceding C version addition, such a failure is associated, not with labor or the pursuit of perfection, but with inefficacious sleeping. The point is expanded in faren a furlong 5; the dreamer resumes his wandering, albeit briefly, and the minimal distance he travels has been chosen for its etymological force—which associates it with plowing (generally echoed at 7.307–8.2). The brevity of even his motion—much less purpose—finds an echo in the fastidiousness of softely 7 (which, of course, also recalls the opening of the poem and the previous onset of vision). And when Will prays, he repeats a public formula, my bileue, the Creed. See further 110n.
In contrast, C 105–8 sound legitimately penitential, in a way that revises both 5.30 and the dreamer’s response to Imaginative at B 12.27–28. Will enters the church and prays Byfore þe cross—as Donaldson suggests, in the nave, like any other penitent layperson (a check upon any clerical pride expressed in the previous conversation). He also performs conventional gestures that indicate sorrow for his sins, thus beginning the penaunce discrete he has promised at 84.
Knocking one’s breast punctuates the center of the general confession recited in every mass, the prayer “Confiteor”; there it accompanies the threefold repetitions, “peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opera, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” The gesture will recur in the confessions of the Deadly Sins; see 6.63–64 (a parody completed by 67), 7.6, 60. Will again weeps within the dream at 6.2. Equally, in C his prayer is no longer the Creed, but my paternoster, a fulfillment of his earlier assertion about the efficacy of “fiat voluntas tua” (88), as well as public formula. To this newfound seriousness in C, one might link Kerby-Fulton’s suggestion (1990:22, 53) that sleep in church identifies a vision clearly prophetic. The dreamer urges his family to attend the Easter mass at 20.468–75 and returns to church at Easter, after a delay to write his preceding vision, at 21.1–5.
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