Summary
Will awakens briefly, then resumes sleep. In his second dream, Reason preaches to the people about honest work. The Seven Deadly Sins confess their selfish, rude behavior amongst friars, merchants, money-lenders, and drunks. Repentance persuades the Seven Deadly Sins and the people to repent and seek the Truth. Piers, a plowman, gives them directions. A few find these too burdensome. The people ask Piers to guide them to Truth. He agrees to do it after he has plowed his field. He offers shares in the harvest for those who help. Piers allocates tasks. But idlers refuse to work, even when threatened with the law. Piers summons Hunger, who deprives everyone. When the harvest is finally gathered the idlers return to their old habits. Truth gives Piers the power to pardon the sins of anyone who lives honestly, which excludes beggars and lawyers. The pardon says that those who do good go to heaven and those who do ill go to hell. A priest complains that this is too simple, which angers Piers, who tears up the pardon. As Piers and the priest argue, Will wakes up. He concludes that salvation lies not in saying Masses, but in doing well and begging God for mercy.
Will embarks on a quest to learn to do well. He meets two friars, who say that Do-well lives with them, and that avoiding sin is like trying to stand still in a rocking boat. Will falls asleep again to the sound of birds. In his third dream he sees Thought, who has actually always been there with him. Thought tries to explain Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best. Will is still confused, so asks Intelligence for help. Intelligence tells Will about a castle of Flesh, which was crafted by Nature. It is guarded by Mind and his sons, the five senses. Inside, Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best watch over Lady Life. Intelligence explains the meaning of each, cautions Will against the misuse of body and mind, and emphasizes the importance of marrying wisely. Dame Study, the wife of Intelligence, tells him that he’s wasting his time with Will. She grudgingly directs Will to her cousin Learning and his wife Scripture, and warns of pitfalls along the way. Learning offers an alternative explanation of Do-well, Do-better and Do-best. He claims that everyone in holy orders should behave well, or have their cloisters confiscated. Scripture speaks about the limitations of learning and those who may be saved.
Analysis
In Will’s second dream-vision he sees the field full of folk from the Prologue again. Reason, a link from the end of the last Step, preaches to the people in the form of a bishop. No one is spared, but he particularly targets hypocritical priests. His insistence that pilgrims “Seek Saint Truth” highlights one of the main themes of the poem. When Repentance repeats the message, the text curiously doesn’t include his words, which are so impactful that they make Will cry and the Seven Deadly Sins want to repent. They each confess, appropriately beginning with egotistical Pride and ending with slow-moving Sloth. Wrath is a friar, particular targets of the poem. Robert the Robber confesses right after the Sins, bridging the allegorical characters with the folk. He inspires them to repent as well and seek the Truth. But the penitent folk get lost on their spiritual journey. They turn to a false authority, the professional pilgrim, for guidance, but he is of no help. To poem claims that people need more than Reason and Repentance, they need spiritual guidance, which the Church is failing to give them.
This is the moment that the poem introduces the titular character Piers the plowman, who knows the way to Truth. He is a humble laborer of the third estate. As an allegorical character, he represents a model of Christian behavior, especially the importance of performing good works. Later in the poem, it is revealed that Piers is a manifestation of Christ. When he offers to guide the folk, after they help him plow his field, he substitutes agricultural labor for the pilgrimage. Piers becomes an ideal ruler, dividing up labor between the estates, social classes, and sexes equitably in a perfect feudal system. Everything goes well until Piers discovers that some people aren’t working. Those who cannot work are taken care of through Christian charity. But some will not work, such as false hermits. Piers asks the knight to enforce the law. He tries, but is ineffective. Without subjects behaving properly, the only other political solution is tyranny—as demonstrated in the Parliament of Rats allegorical fable in the Prologue. So Piers calls upon Hunger as a natural solution—a coercive force for social good, which works to motivate the idlers long enough to gather the harvest.
As a reward for Piers' success, Truth sends him an absolute pardon, offering absolution from both punishment in purgatory and guilt from sin. The pardon thus performs the functions of an indulgence and the sacrament of penance, implying that Piers Plowman is a holy man. The pardon may only be provided to those who work, and those who can’t work. The poem explicitly connects work with Christian virtue. The pardon is simple, just two lines from the Athanasian Creed, granting salvation to those who do good and damnation to those who do not. A priest then examines the document and denies that it’s a pardon at all. Piers rips up the paper in anger and renounces his past life. This passage is one of the most controversial in the text. Scholars disagree whether Piers’ or the priest’s interpretation of the pardon is correct, and what Pier’s tearing of it means. Langland cut this passage from the C-text, which he revised after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; it could be that he wanted to distance himself from peasant rebellions. The scene marks a turning point in the poem, away from the social, as Piers rejects the Active Life in favor of the Contemplative Life, and Will seeks Truth as an inward, individual pursuit.
The beginning of Step VIII echoes the beginning of the Prologue, giving the reader a chance to notice Will’s spiritual improvement. He is still wandering, but now has a specific goal: to find Do-well. Two friars try to fool him into believing that Do-well lives with them, but he sees through their exaggeration, and continues to search. In his third dream-vision, Will encounters a series of allegorical figures who represent parts of himself, and also intellectual faculties that every human possesses. His quest is thus both individual/internal and universal. This part of the poem is sometimes called the Vita section.
Thought teaches Will that Do-well is one part of a triad that also includes Do-better and Do-best. He describes Do-well as honest labor, Do-better as compassion, and Do-best as the reprimand of sinners. What these three mean allegorically is a point of critical contention. Some theories have equated them with the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the Illuminative, Purgative, and Unitive stages of mysticism; the Active, Contemplative, and Mixed lives; and Faith, Hope, and Charity. It’s clear that there is a relationship among the three, and that they have an order. Intelligence expands upon Thought’s definition. Do-well is self-focused, personal obedience to God’s law. Do-better places the individual in the context of the community, and calls for love. Do-best acts on that love through good works to help others.
The castle of flesh represents the human body. Lady Life symbolizes the soul. She is served by Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best, and guarded by the five senses. Intelligence’s teaching about the dual possibilities for the soul, resembling God or the devil, echoes the refrain established in the Prologue that everyone has the potential to go to Heaven or Hell depending on how well they live on earth. Both Dame Study and Scripture’s lessons about theology center on the Christian teaching that God is Love.
