“Between them I found a fair field full of folk, All manner of men, both moneyed and poor, Either walking or working at what the world wants.”
The field in between the tower of Truth and the devil’s dungeon represents the earthly plane where humans live their everyday lives. The overall geography therefore represents Christian cosmology. The “fair field full of folk” is the main concern of the poem. Langland describes all sorts of characters, and emphasizes sensuous pleasures of food, wine, and fine clothes. At the same time, the presence of Heaven and Hell is a reminder of the choices which must be made in everyday life, which will have eternal consequences in the afterlife.
The genre of Will’s vision of the field full of folk is called an Estates Satire. The three estates, or social classes, in medieval England were the clergy (first estate), nobility (second estate), and peasantry (third estate). The King, while essential, was not part of any estate. The poem describes the folk as either working hard and performing their social roles properly for the good of the whole Christian community, or choosing worldliness instead, by selfishly accumulating wealth. The choice between right and wrong is clear.
“Piers the Plowman, Peter, that is, Christ.”
This passage is important because Soul names Piers Plowman explicitly as Christ. According to Peter Sutton’s footnote, “Piers is a diminutive of Peter, Peter is the Rock, and the Rock is Christ: see Matthew xvi 18 and 1 Corinthians x 4.”
“This gentleman Jesus will joust in Piers’ arms, In his helmet and armor called human shape. He’ll appear in the coat of Piers the Plowman Lest the consummate deity of Christ be discovered.”
Jesus has come to fight the devil in a jousting competition for the fruit of the tree of Piers Plowman, stolen in Step XV. It turns out that Jesus Christ is jousting as Piers Plowman.
“Piers then had power/To bind and unbind on earth and in heaven”
This comes from Matthew 16:19, when Jesus tells Peter, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven.” At this moment, Piers the Plowman becomes Peter, whom Christ designated to found the Church.
“Attired like a man, overturning Truth,/Ruining the crop, ripping up the roots,/Spreading false shoots to satisfy wants/In each country he came to, cutting down Truth/And sowing deceit in its stead like a god.”
Truth is a synonym for God in the poem, so in overturning him, the Antichrist is acting as Anti-truth. The references to the crop, roots, and sowing seeds continue the agricultural motifs from the previous step.
“I’ll become a pilgrim/And walk the whole width of this wide, wide world/To seek Piers the Plowman, who will put down Pride.”
This line, which closes Piers Plowman brings the poem full circle, to the first line when Will “went seeking wonders in the wide, wide world.”
The poem identifies the central crisis in the Church: corruption. In the end, it proposes two solutions: First, a return to humble agrarian values, represented by Piers Plowman. Second, for friars to get reacquainted with their consciences, and thus recover their true calling—the salvation of Christian souls.
Other than seeking Piers, the second aim of Conscience’s quest is to “find work for friars who flatter out of need/And no longer know me.” This issue of need goes back to the beginning of this Step, when Will listens to the personification of need argue for an exception to Christian virtue, as long as moderation is observed. Conscience had some empathy for the friars’ need in the middle of this Step as well, promising to shelter them in the Church if they agreed to do their work properly and live moderately.
“I landed in London, where I lived in a hovel/In Cornhill with Kit, clothed like a tramp,/Though disliked, believe me, by ignorant “hermits”/And beggars for the rhymes that I wrote with good reason.
One hot day of harvest when I had my health/And limbs fit for labor but lazed instead,/Doing nothing but drink and dream and doze/And traipse about thinking, /Reason grew testy:
“Can’t you serve or sing in a service at church,/Or heap up hay and heave it on to carts,/Or mow it and move it and make it into sheaves?/Or rise up early and direct the reaping,/Or be out in the open at night with a horn/To watch my cattle; can’t you keep the corn/In my croft from thieves, or make clothes or cobble,/Or hedge and harrow, keep sheep or herd/My pigs and geese—be employed to some purpose/To help out folk who are old and infirm?”
“God help me,” I said, “I’m sorry to say/I’m too weak to work with a sickle or scythe,/And I’m truly too tall to stoop and toil/For hours on end by hand at some task.”/Then you’ve land to live off, or family funds,”/Reason responded, “for you seem a spendthrift/Who wastefully whiles his time away?/Or perhaps you hang around butteries begging/Or fetch up at churches on Fridays and feast- days,/Living by lying, which little will help/When justice awards men their just reward:/Thou wilt render to every man according to his works/.Or are you injured or lame in one limb,/Or maimed by some mischance, which might excuse you?”
“When years ago I was young,” I began,/“My father and friends financed my schooling/Till I understood the holy Scriptures/And knew what the books say is best for the body/And safest for the soul—provided it’s observed./But in faith I’ve not found since the death of my friends/A career I care for that’s not in a cope./So if I must labor to earn a living/,I should live by the labor that I actually learnt:
Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was/Called.
“Hence I live in London, and I let London keep me;/The tools that I toil with and take everywhere/Are my Pater noster, Placebo, Dirige and primer,/And sometimes my Psalter and my seven psalms/That I sing for the souls of the people who support me,/Afford me a welcome and feed me freely/When I make monthly visits or maybe more,/Now his house, now hers: that’s how I go begging,/With no bottle or bag but my belly alone./And Reason, I reckon it’s wrong to force/A man in holy orders to heave and to haul,/For Leviticus says that the law of our Lord/Is that truly intelligent tonsured clergy/Should be spared sweating and serving on juries,/Fighting at the forefront and molesting folk:/See that none render evil for evil.
For the clerics of Christ in church and in choir,/Like all those ordained, are the heirs of heaven:/The Lord is the portion of my inheritance, and Clemency/doth not constrain.
It’s becoming for clergy to praise and serve Christ/And for lay folk to labor, to cart and to carry./But ordination should only be for offspring/Of franklins and free men and folk truly wed,/So that bondsmen and bastards and beggars’ brats/Should sweat while the sons of nobles should serve/Either God or the good as suits their degree,/By singing the Mass or sitting as stewards,/Recording and advising on the fit use of funds./But bonded laborers’ boys are now bishops,/And bastards’ bairns are ordained archdeacons,/And knighthoods are sold to soap-sellers’ sons,/While lords’ sons labor and must pawn their lands/To fight our foes and defend the realm,/Protecting and caring for the commons and the King./And monks and nuns, who should maintain the needy,/Have acquired land from knights and ennobled their kin,/While the patrons of parishes, even popes, despise/True blood and install sons of Simony instead;/Holy living and charity have long since been lost/And will not be found till the world is reformed./So I beg you, forbear to upbraid me, Reason,/For my conscience knows the course that Christ would have metake.”
But Conscience said, “By Christ, I can’t accept that,/For begging in cities is no seemly existence/Unless it’s approved by some prelate or prior.”
“That is so,” I said, “and now I do see/That I’ve wasted time in trivial tasks.”/And I went at once to worship in church,/Beating my breast and bending my knees,/Sighing for my sins and saying the Our Father.
This section of the poem at the end of Step XIV is often referred to in scholarship as the apologia pro vita sua, meaning “a defense of one's own life.” Will is and living in London, and is here awake between dreams. Reason and Conscience challenge Will to do something useful for the community, like farming. Will replies that he is too tall and weak to do manual labor. And while he is not a member of the nobility, he is educated. So he makes his living as an independent clergyman—praying, reading the psalms, saying services for the souls of his patrons, and writing this poem.
There followed a confessor, coped as a friar./He whispered these words to winsome Miss Money/As if confessing her, and fondly confiding:/“Though you’ve lain, it’s clear, with commoners and clerics,/And been friendly with Falsehood for fifty-odd years,/I’ll absolve you myself for a sackload of wheat/And pray for you daily and do all the damage/I can to the conscience of clerics and knights.”
So Miss Money knelt to admit she was immodest,/And confessed her shameless and frequent faults,/Telling him a tale and tipping him a coin/To act as her private emissary and priest./
He summarily absolved her and swiftly added,/“We are putting in a window that’s proving pricey:/If you’ll glaze the gable and engrave your name,/Your soul will be certain to soar up to heaven.”
“If that’s guaranteed, I’ll be glad,” she agreed,/“To be friends for ever, unfailing and faithful,/As long as you leave men some lecherous license,/And don’t blame ladies who long for some lust./It’s the frailty of the flesh, as you’ll find in your books,/And it’s hardly unnatural, it’s how we’re all here;/If a scandal’s avoided, it’s soon all resolved,/And the soonest forgiven of the Seven Deadly Sins./So have mercy” said Money, “on men with the itch,/And I’ll rebuild and roof your run-down church,/Whitewash the walls and glaze the windows,/And pay for painting the patron’s portrait,/Till nobody knows I’m not one of your nuns.”
This passage is an example of satire. The friar and Miss Money strike deals: He absolves her of her immodesty, meaning that he forgives the sin of greed. In exchange she agrees to buy a new window for his friary. And then in turn he grants easy absolution to her lecherous friends, forgiving the sin of lust. Thus the friar forgives two of the seven deadly sins, greed and lust, because be was bribed by Miss Money.
“But a king shall come and require their confession/And beat them with the Bible for breaking their Rule,”
This prophetic voice in the poem imagines a future king as confessor, requiring the clergy to confess their sins to him. It is read by some scholars as foreshadowing the Protestant Reformation, which was spearheaded by King Henry VIII.
To Lucifer a loud voice cried from the light,/“Princes of this place, unbar the portal./Here comes with his crown the King of Glory!”
Then looking at Lucifer in alarm, Satan said,/“Such a light freed Lazarus without our leave,/So we’re bound to face trouble and terrible tumult./If this King should come he’ll unleash the whole crowd/And lead them to Lazarus and lock me in chains./Patriarchs and prophets have promised for years/That a lord and a light will lead mankind hence.
“So Ragamuffin, bring me the bars that Belial,/Your grandfather, molded and made with your mother./I’ll cut off this lord and quell his light,/And will bar the gates before brightness blinds us./We’ll discover and cover every chink and crack/So that light cannot enter at louvers or loop-holes./And Astaroth, summon and send out our servants,/Colting and his crew, to recover what’s ours./Boil up brimstone and pour it burning/On the heads of any who head for the walls./Bring up the biggest cross-bows and cannon/And fire off sufficient to blind his forces./Set Mahon at the mangonel to rain down mill-stones,/And with hooks and with caltrops we’ll halt the whole host.”/
“Listen, said Lucifer, “a long time ago/I knew this lord and his lustrous light./He can’t be undone by devilry or death,/He goes where he will, but I warn him to beware:/If he robs me of my rights, he must rob me by force/Since by right and by reason the ranks that are here,
Well-meaning and mean, are body and soul mine./For he, King of heaven, he it was said/That if Adam ate the apple, all should then die/And dwell with us devils; so he ordained,/For that sentence was spoken by Truth himself./I have sat here as sovereign for seven thousand years/And the law won’t allow him to lightly unseat me.”
“That is so,” Satan said, “but I’m strangely afraid,/For you got them by guile, breaking into his garden./You sat in the apple tree, shaped like a serpent/To egg Eve on and entice her to eat./You told a tall tale, a treacherous lie:/That’s how you herded so many in here,/And what’s gained by guile is not fairly got.”
And Goblin agreed. “God won’t be beguiled;/They were damned by treachery and our title’s not true.”
“I fear,” said Satan, “that he’s certain to free them,/For he’s paced about preaching to people for years./I’ve assailed him with sin and once even said,/‘Are you God or God’s son?’ but he gave me short shrift./Thirty-two, he was, when I went and warned/The wife of Pilate what person he was/In a dream that I sent when I saw her asleep./The Jews, who hated him, asked that he hang,/While I only longed to lengthen his life./When his body had bones he was bothersome and strove/To save the sinful if sinners were willing,/But his soul, once dead, would stop them from sinning./And see, here’s a soul sailing toward us” said Satan./“I suspect that it’s God, and he’s glowing in glory./My advice is to flee as fast as we may;/We’d be better not born than bide till he sees us./Your lying, Lucifer, has lost us our prey:/When we followed you first, we fell from heaven,/Believing your lies, all leaping together,/And your latest lie has lost us Adam/And our lordship, I believe, over land and water:/Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.”
The light said again to Lucifer, “Unlock.”
“What lord says unlock?” called Lucifer. “Who are you?”
“The King of Glory,” came back the cry,/“The Master of Might and all manner of Virtues,/So dukes of this dungeon undo these gates,/And hail the Christ, son of heaven’s King!”
With that hell broke, and Belial’s bars.
This is the climax of the poem: the Harrowing of Hell, in which Christ releases the souls of the penitent. There are multiple devils in Hell: Satan is the Prince of Death. Lucifer is the Prince of Hell. Belial is a Hebrew name for the devil. Astaroth is the Queen of Heaven worshipped by the Phoenicians and Babylonians, and later called the Duke of Hell. Mahon is another name for Mohammed. Ragamuffin is a character from medieval miracle plays. Goblin is a familiar-spirit from Anglo-Saxon folklore.
