Summary
In a dream within a dream, Will’s fleshly desires are indulged for many years by Fortune. But she and the friars desert him in his old age. Fidelity urges Will to expose Falsehood. Scripture warns him of how difficult it is to achieve salvation. Emperor Trajan comforts Will with his own story of being saved, despite being a heathen, by good deeds. Scripture continues her lecture. Nature councils Will to look for the Reason in natural wonders. Will’s dream within his dream ends. Another voice warns him not to want to know too much. The voice turns out to be his own Imagination, who goes on to explain Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best as living humbly and respecting true learning. Imagination says to avoid speculation, because there are some mysteries that only Nature can know. He reminds Will that God grants grace to the meek (although saints will sit higher in heaven than the penitent), and that the best way to live is simply by God’s law. Will starts to argue as Imagination disappears.
Will awakes. After wandering in confusion for years, he dreams again: He dines with Patience, a Doctor, Learning, Conscience, Clergy, and Scripture. Will and Patience eat humbly while the Doctor indulges. He asks the Doctor and Learning about Do-well, Do-better and Do-best. They both attempt explanations, but Patience shows that they really just mean the love of Christ. The Doctor ridicules Patience for this, while Conscience joins Patience and Will to find proof. They meet Haukin, a merchant who claims that he does well. But his coat is soiled with sin. Conscience instructs Haukin how to keep clean: through belief and penance. Patience explains that poverty can overcome sin and the rich can be saved through charity. Haukin begs for mercy. Will awakes and finds himself in London. Reason criticizes Will for the idleness of his lifestyle.
Will has a fifth dream, in which Soul explains himself and warns Will not to seek to know everything. Soul says that Charity can only be attained with the help of Piers the Plowman. He claims that in this disorderly time we should leave it to God to provide. Clergy should return to the life of the early Church. The bishops should go to the Holy Land to convert the Muslims and Jews. Soul describes Charity as a tree grown for Piers the Plowman. At the sound of Piers’ name, Will experiences another dream within a dream. Piers explains the meaning of the tree: As the devil waits for the fruit to fall, he can be overcome by Freewill and the aid of Christ. The Passion of Christ is described, including a passage when Christ jousts with the devil. Will’s dream within a dream ends. He sees Abrahamic Faith, who explains the Trinity and the fact that although he has welcomed God, he is damned unless he also finds Christ. Hope arrives, carrying Christ’s two commandments. Will hesitates between Abrahamic Faith and Hope. Then he meets Charity in the person of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan explains that Faith, Hope, and Charity are all necessary, along with all parts of the Trinity, which he describes using a hand as an analogy. God is merciful when one repents for sins of the flesh, but sins against the Spirit are worse, murder is basically unforgivable, and there’s no excuse for being uncharitable. Will again awakes.
Analysis
In Will’s dream-within-a-dream he finds Fortune, the fantasy of which must have been tempting due to his poverty. This section reasserts that he is only human, and so fallible and given to sin. His inability to grasp the teachings of Scripture point to a problem from the Middle Ages: The Bible was difficult for many to understand on their own. In an ideal feudal system, the First Estate, the clergy, are supposed to instruct the Third Estate in how to behave. Once again, the poem points out how corrupt friars are letting Christendom down through their selfish attention to financial gain. Will gains some experiential knowledge as he ages within his dream. When he teaches the friars the importance of baptism he shows spiritual growth.
The example of Trajan reflects an anxiety in the Middle Ages about the fate of good people who were not Christian. His story circulated at the time in response. Trajan, a famously just Roman Emperor, was supposedly rescued from Hell by St. Gregory. This story illustrated that God could have mercy even on those who were not baptised. Trajan’s teachings to Will reflect several of the poem’s themes: how hard work, good deeds, and love lead to salvation. His criticism of accumulating wealth repeats the earlier lesson of Scripture, directing it specifically at priests. Note that “Imagination” in the Middle Ages was more narrowly defined than the modern conception, meaning the mind’s ability to form mental pictures, to visualize or remember.
This passage contrasts the uncertainty of Will’s waking life with the insight and truth he finds in dreams. While he wanders the world he reflects upon what he has learned from his visions about corruption, salvation, and love.
In Will’s fourth dream-vision, he finds his patience tested. He eats with a Doctor, a learned man, who is both a friar and a theologian. The Doctor’s gluttony contrasts with Will and Patience’s deprivation. He eats like a member of the nobility, which is clearly outside of his humble station as a friar. Will and Patience’s sour food is named after the sacrament of penance. Some scholars have seen this passage as an allegory about how to read the Bible, with the rich foods consumed by the Doctor representing overly complex interpretations which hide meaning. A friar, once again, is criticized here for corrupting the sacrament of penance. The Doctor’s corruption infuriates Will, at which point Patience calms him.
Will then meets Haukin, who personifies the Active Life (“Activa Vita”). This means that he lives life in the secular world, as opposed to the contemplative life of a monk. He has some positive qualities, such as his hatred of idleness. But he has a major problem: the accumulation of sin. Haukin’s coat is a symbol of his spiritual condition. Every time he commits a sin, it stains his coat. The sacrament of penance cleans the coat, but then he quickly soils it again with another sin. His inability to keep his coat clean illustrates how men active in the secular world were prone to frequent sin. Patience instructs him how to keep his coat clean through patient poverty, which will lead him to an eternally good afterlife in Heaven.
Will's fifth dream, in which he converses with Soul, is important because Soul explicitly identifies Piers Plowman as Christ, calling him “Piers the Plowman, Peter, that is, 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.” Will’s odd line “For as long I’ve lived in this land as Long Will” has huge significance for scholars, because it’s a clue to the identity of the author. Peter Sutton notes that “Long Will suggests both perseverance and a physical description. ‘Long’ combined with ‘land’ is probably a pun on ‘Langland,’ although ‘land’ may be a misreading of ‘London.’”
The Tree motif in the poem represents Christendom. Soul first introduces the complex symbol in Step XV as a diagnosis of what is wrong with the current state of affairs: the tree is rotten at its roots. The First Estate (the clergy) is the root of the faith, which should rule. But sickness has sapped the roots, so the branches are baren. Later, Soul describes the Tree of Charity which represents the ideal Christian community: “Its core is clemency, its flowers a fair visage, and its root is mercy and mildness of manner. Its leaves are loyalty and the law of the Church, And its fruit can grow thanks to good men and God.” Free Will tends the tree for Piers the Plowman. He represents mankind’s freedom to cultivate their lives, unbound by fate, but guided by the Christian spirit.
In a dream-within-a-dream, Piers explains how the tree is supported by three props, symbolizing the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. They have all “sprung from a single root,” meaning that while they are three, they are also all aspects of one God. Piers and Free Will use the props as weapons to defend the tree from the devil, who tries to steal its fruit. The three types of fruit on the tree represent the three feminine estates in the Middle Ages: marriage, widowhood, and virginity, and also the fallen state of mankind. The devil steals the fruit, but Piers steals it back, and then leaves it to Jesus to decide who it rightfully belongs to. Will goes on to summarize the life of Christ, in which the passion and sacrifice is figured as a joust. Will returns to this moment later in his sixth dream.
Step XVII is dense with biblical characters: Abraham is a figure from the Old Testament, which from a Christian perspective is spiritually incomplete. The story of Isaac comes from Genesis 22:1-19. The Samaritan is a character from the New Testament, (Luke 10:30-36) and symbolizes the importance of good works.
