Piers Plowman

Yet the greatest of all the alliterative poems is of southern origin. Piers Plowman, which survives in three distinct versions (the so-called A-text, composed 1362-3; the B-text, 1377; and the C-text, c, 1393), has presented its critics with many prob­lems. Expert opinion tends, on the whole, to favour belief in a single author, William Langland, who may have been born about 1333, had his schooling at Great Malvern priory, and taken minor orders before, having completed the A-text, he re­moved to London to live on Cornhill with his wife Kitte and his daughter, Calotte. In the Б-text Langland altered and greatly expanded his original poem; in the C-text he undertook a final revision, not generally regarded as an improvement. The book is divided into two main parts – the ‘Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman’ and the 'Life of Dowel, Dobet and Dobest' (Do Well, Do Веtter and Do Best). Though little of it is easy reading, the persistant reader will not lack reward; for the poem is of compelling sincerity and power, its sombre landscape lit with gleams of beauty. Langland is a bitter critic of the whole top-heavy ecclesiastical system – ‘we han so manye maistres’ - and of the rich and proud; but he is not a demagogue, still less a revolu­tionary. He is learned, austere, a seeker after truth and a teacher of righteousness. In his lovely lines on Charity he evokes an ideal which has nothing in common with the rantings of John Ball:

'Charite,’ quod he, ‘ne chaffareth nougte, ne chalengeth, ne craueth.

As proude of а реny, as of a pounde of golde,

And is as gladde of a goune, of a graye russet

As of a tunicle of Tarse, or of trye scarlet.

He is gladde with alle gladde, and good tyl alle wykked And leueth and loueth alle, that owre lorde made.

Curseth he no сгеature, ne he can bere no wratthe,

Ne no lykynge hath to lye, ne laughe men to scorne.

Al that men seith, he let it soth, and in solace taketh,

And alle manere mischiefs, in myldenesse he suffreth;

Coueitelh he none earthly good, but heuene-riche blisse.'

Piers Plowman offers us a congested canvas of late fourteenth-century society. The value of the poem as a source for social history has been widely recognised, more widely, perhaps, than its poetic quality. Yet, in contrast with Troilus, or the Canterbury Tales, or even with Confessio Amantis,the figures are two-dimen­sional, we do not see them in the round; we seem to look at a medieval fresco, rather than to mingle with a medieval crowd. Perhaps by reason of its form—for the Old English alliterative line was burning itself out - the whole poem has an archaic air. It is none the less impressive for that. But, whereas Gower pre­sents us with the conventions of a polite society, and Chaucer with human nature as we know it, Langland speaks to us from a forgotten world, drowned, mysterious, irrecoverable.

John Gower

John Gower, who came of a family of Kentish squires, was a Londoner by adoption, a friend of Chaucer’s, and a generous benefactor of the priory of St. Mary Overy in Southwark (now the cathedral), where his effigy may still be seen, the head resting on his three principal works—the French, Speculum Meditantis (or Mirour de I'Homme), the Latin, Vox Clamantis, and the English, Confessio Amantis. Gower's will was proved in 1408, but we know neither the date of his birth nor much about his life, though this may be presumed to have been leisurely. There are 10,000 lines in the Latin book, over 29,000 in the French, 33,000 in the English—and some minor works as well. Gower was essentially a stylist, whom the ordinary reader probably underrates. He is distinguished principally by his 'correctness' and by the ease and lucidity of his French and English verse. But he was also a perceptive and skilful narrator and, though inordinately addicted to moralizing, he does not lack humour. For historians, much of the interest of his work lies in what he tells us of his own reactions to contemporary history. In the first book of Vox Clamantis, for example, Gower succeeds, despite (or, perhaps, by reason of) what W. P. Ker called the 'detestable verse', in conveying an idea of the horror and panic aroused in the minds of the gentry by the rising of 1381:

Quidam sternutant asinorum more ferine,

Mugitus quidam personuere boum;

Quidam porcorum grunnitus horridiores

Emittunt, que suo murmure terra tremit.

The same poem, believed to have been composed in 1382 or 1383, also reveals something of the poet's attitude to Richard II. Having begun by declaring the king too young to be held re­sponsible for the corruption of his court, Gower, in a slightly later revision of the poem, takes it upon himself to read Richard a lecture on his kingly duties, urging him to be worthy of his famous father and reminding him that the God-given beauty of his person ought to be matched by the virtue of his soul. It says much for Richard's forbearance that when, two or three years later, he met his surly critic on the Thames, he should have in­vited him into the royal barge and encouraged him to write something more palatable:

He hath this charge upon me leid,

And bad me doo my besynesse

That to his hihe worthinesse

Some newe thing I scholde boke,

That he himself it mihtc loke

After the forme of my writynge.

Gower was naturally flattered: and it seems likely that his laudable decision to write in English and to season edification with love-stories was taken on the king's advice. The first recen­sion of Confessio Amantis, completed in 1390, opens with a pro­logue which describes it as

A bok for king Richardes sake,

To whom belongeth my ligeance

With al myn hertes obeissance

In al that evere a liege man

Unto his king may doon or can.

Oddly enough, it seems not to have been the events of 1386-8 which shook Gower's loyalty to Richard, but something that occurred in or after 1390. By 1391 he had cut out the compliments to Richard and, by 1393 at latest, had substituted a dedication to Henry of Lancaster. Whatever brought about this metamorphosis, it can hardly have been the gift from Henry of an inexpensive collar,' valued at 26s.8d.; all that is clear is that henceforward Gower became increasingly critical of Richard II. The Сrопicа Tripertita, which he added to his Vox Clamantis early in the next reign, recapi­tulates the story of Richard's last years from the Lancastrian standpoint; and one of the last poems that he ever wrote—per­haps the last, for he went blind shortly afterwards—is addressed 'In Praise of Peace' to Henry: God hath the chose in comfort of ous alle.

Though he seems to have had no particular attachment to Gaunt, Gower must have had Lancastrian affiliations before 1399. It is interesting to find that Confessio Amantis was trans­lated into Portuguese by an English canon of Lisbon, probably in Gower's own lifetime, when the queen of Portugal was Henry's sister, Philippa of Lancaster.