170 (B.13.172) dido … dysores tale: A dysore is a storyteller or minstrel. The word is not necessarily pejorative, though it is clearly pejorative in L’s two uses of it, here and at 8.52 (B.6.54, A.7.49). Dido in this meaning is otherwise unattested (it seems unrelated to the nineteenth-century dialectical usage that OED defines as a caper or “row”). It is evidently a coinage by L, and defined in the off-verse as a minstrel’s tale, that is, a worthless, blatant fiction, like those that Piers has warned the knight not to listen to at dinner, 8.50–52 (B.6.52–4, A.7.47–9)—perhaps, as is commonly thought, with reference either to the romantic tale of Dido, as told in the Aeneid and the Heroides and often retold, and dismissed by St Augustine in Confessions 1.13 (along with the whole fable of the Aeneid) as inanity, or to Dido’s degeneration into a poetic byword for a mistress, as in a poem by Hilary the Englishman quoted by Boswell 1980:249, “Ut te vidi, mox Cupido/Me percussit; sed diffido;/Nam me tenet mea Dido/Cujus iram reformido” (The moment I saw you,/Cupid struck me, but I hesitate,/For my Dido holds me,/And I fear her wrath). For further discussion of Dido’s reputation in the Middle Ages, see Mann 2002:12–13 and Desmond 1994. Marjorie Woods (2001, 2002) has argued that schoolboys were regularly required to compose laments by Dido, Andromache, or Niobe and enact them; thus the doctor may be implying that Patience is being childish. Woods cites Pico della Mirandola’s famous letter to Ermolao Barbaro, in which he imagines Aquinas, Scotus, Albertus Magnus, or Averroes coming to life again, learning the new eloquence, and, “in terms as free as possible from barbarism, their barbarous style,” saying, “We have lived illustrious, friend Ermolao, and to posterity shall live, not in the schools of the grammarians and teaching-places of young minds, but in the company of the philosophers, conclaves of sages, where the questions for debate are not concerning the mother of Andromache or the sons of Niobe and such light trifles, but of things human and divine” (Woods 2002:287–88; cited from Symonds 1877:333–34; the translation is his; for the original, dated Florence, 3 June 1485, see Garin 1952:806). The doctor’s contempt here is quite like Pico’s—or rather, like what Pico supposes Aquinas and the others would feel if they lived when he did.
Perhaps, though, dido does not refer to Virgil’s Dido at all, but is a nonsense word like “folderol” or “la-di-da” (or “hey trollilolly” 8.123, A.7.108; B.6.116 “how trolly lolly”; see also “mamele” 5.123 and “bablede” B.5.8, A.5.8), invented on the spot by the doctor out of the first syllables of Patience’s “disce, doce”—with the pattern completed by the echo of “dilige” in “dysores.” (Cf. French dada, hobby-horse, and the art movement Dada, whose name came from that and was meant to signify meaninglessness; also French dodo, baby-talk for “sleep”). See 20.145 (B.18.142), “bote a tale of walterot,” and 20.150 (B.18.147) “truyfle,” and Pearsall’s note to 20.145; cf. Chaucer’s “He served hem with nyfles and with fables,” SumT D1760, where “nyfle” clearly has the same meaning as “dido” and is equally mysterious in origin (OED, s.v. nifle, n.); see 20.150n below; see also MED trotevale, from Handlyng Synne. Both MED and OED say that “walterot” is the same word with syllables reversed—and thus apparently not based on “Walter”—and thus it isn’t parallel to Dido as a character. See Noel Coward 1937:287, “slick American ‘vo-do-deo-do’ musical farces,” where the intention is like Langland’s, to refer dismissively to a trivial and inferior literary form. Kane 1989:103–4 lists it as one of those expressions in the poem that “await recovery,” and “require annotation, not translation.”
171–73 Al the wit … parties (B.13.173–76 Al þe wit … peple): The doctor responds not scripturally at all but politically: interestingly, he here represents the very school of hard knocks, the cynicism of experience, that Conscience credited Patience with representing. (There is a valuable exchange of opinion on Patience’s ideas in YLS 15 (2001) between Anna Baldwin and Fiona Somerset, in which, roughly speaking, Baldwin (99–108) adopts Patience’s idealism, and Somerset (109–15) responds with something like the doctor’s realism, though not his bad manners. They live the poem.) By wit B.13.168, Patience presumably meant both the skill to solve the riddle and the wisdom to grasp the value of laying on your enemy with love till he smiles at you (146); what the doctor means by wit here is hardheaded realism. The poem will continue to promote Patience’s view; see 17.123–24n. On the pope and his enemies, see 17.234n and Stephen Barney’s very full note to 21.428–48; also J. A. W. Bennett 1943:60–63, Gwynn 1943:4, Anna Baldwin 2001:105. As for kynges (B), Bennett says (61) that “the context suggests that the poet was thinking of the English and French kings as adherents of the pope and antipope respectively”—though Barney makes it clear that nothing in the B text requires us to date it after the schism, which began in 1378.
B.13.178 That Pacience þo most passe, “for pilgrymes konne wel lye”: Passe means “leave the house.” For Patience’s “pilgrymes cloþes,” see line 29 above. The quotation marks indicate that these are the doctor’s words. On pilgrims and lying, see Prol.47–50 (B.Prol.46–49, A.Prol.46–49) and 7.180–81 (B.5.535–36, A.6.23–24), where the palmer insists that he has never heard of any palmer asking after truth. The meaning “lie” for “Canterbury tale” did not develop until at least the fifteenth century, (Spurgeon 1925:1.81 etc.) or even the sixteenth (OED).
175–83 Ac Concience … parfitnesse to fynde (B.13.179–215 Ac Conscience … pilgrymes as it were): Conscience’s purpose in going away with Patience is clearer in the much shortened C version. In B he will go til I haue preued moore (182), a vague formulation that perhaps means “gained more actual experience”—either of Patience, or in general—as opposed to book-learning—see B.13.133–35a and note—but that also carries a suggestion of “proving himself” morally. Presumably he will learn both by undergoing experience himself and by hearing of Patience’s experience; it is the latter source of knowledge that Clergie assumes at B.13.185–87 that Conscience has in mind. At B.13.191 he adds a penitential purpose, and apparently a desire to imitate Patient’s patient will; in B.13.201 (C.15.179) he implies that he hopes to become perfectly patient, although the contrast of perfect patience there to half þi pak of bokes suggests that “patience” still carries the meaning “experience.” At B.13.214 Clergie interprets Conscience’s purpose as to be tested in order to be made perfect; and Conscience’s own final, rather grand articulation of this purpose is for the two of them, Conscience and Clergie, with Patience as their ally, to bring peace and religious unity to all nations; see below, B.13.203–4n, B.13.207–10n.
In the C version, this process of gradual clarification—as if Conscience were figuring out before our eyes why he is going—is replaced by an immediate settled decision: his purpose is to perfect himself in patience, once again through the medium of experience: he must escape the world of books if he is to learn kynde pacience. No mention is made of any grand plan to apply his newfound perfection to saving the world. Of course one should keep in mind that L seems to place a high value on an impulsive decision to go on pilgrimage: see Piers and the knight at 8.56 (B.6.57, A.7.52); Conscience at the end of the poem; perhaps the Samaritan’s sudden resumption of his journey to Jerusalem.
B.13.183–84 What! … redels: With this friendly dig, Clergie indicates that he shares the doctor’s contempt for Patience’s speech, ridiculing its presentation as a redels (cf. B.13.167) and reducing to absurdity Patience’s formulation at B.13.169–71 of the political value of patient love in terms of the generous requital it will earn from kings and queens. A yeresʒeue is a New Year’s gift, traditionally exchanged at court; cf. Gawain 67; though it can be a bribe exacted by an office-holder, as at B.3.100; see Alford, Gloss. Clergie still insists on the superiority of