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NOTE: The base is MS W; alterations = { } for additions/replacements
to W alone, ( ) for omissions from W; [ ] for emendations of the archetype;
* = lines to which textual notes have been appended.
3001 Now is Mede þe mayde and na mo of hem alle [*]
3002 Wiþ Bedeles and () baillies brou3t bifore þe kyng. [*]
3003 The kyng called a clerk --kan I no3t his name-- [*]
3004 To take Mede þe maide and maken hire at ese. [*]
3005 "I shal assayen hire myself and sooþliche appose [*]
3006 What man of þis moolde, þat hire were [moste leue], [*]
3007 And if she werche bi {my} wit and my wil folwe,[*]
3008 I wol forgyuen hire þis gilt, so me god helpe!"
3009 Curteisly þe clerk þanne, as þe kyng hi3te, [*]
3010 Took Mede bi þe myddel and [mened] hire into chambre, [*]
3011 [Ac] þer was murþe & Mynstralcie Mede to plese. [*]
3012 They þat wonyeþ {at} westmynstre worshipe{d} hire alle [*]
3013 Gentilliche wiþ ioye, þe Iustices somme
3014 Busked hem to þe bour þer þe burde dwellede
3015 To conforten hire kyndely by clergies leue, [*]
3016 And seiden, "Mourne no3t, Mede, ne make þow no sorwe,
3017 For we wol wisse þe kyng and þi wey shape
3018 To be wedded at þi wille and wher þee leef likeþ,
3019 For al Conscience<> cast or craft, as I trowe."[*]
3020 Mildely Mede þanne merciede hem alle
3021 Of hire grete goodnesse and gaf hem echone
3022 Coupes of clene gold and coppes of siluer,
3023 Rynges wiþ Rubies, and richesses manye,[*]
3024 The leeste man of hire meynee a moton of golde.
3025 Thanne lau3te þei leue, þise lordes, at Mede.
3026 Wiþ þat comen clerkes to conforten hire þe same
3027 And beden hire be bliþe, "For we beþ þyne owene
3028 For to werche þi wille þe while þow my3t laste."
3029 Hendiliche heo þanne bihi3te hem þe same:
3030 To louen hem lelly and lordes to make,
3031 And in þe Consistorie at court do callen [hi]re names.[*]
3032 "Shal no lewednesse lette þe leode þat I louye
3033 That he ne worþ first auaunced, for I am biknowen [*]
3034 Ther konnynge clerkes shul clokke bihynde."
3035 Thanne cam þer a Confessour, coped as a frere;
3036 To Mede þe mayde [mekeliche he loutede] [*]
3037 And seide ful softely, in shrift as it were,
3038 "Thei3 lewed men and lered men hadde leyen by þee boþe [*]
3039 And {Falshede} hadde yfolwed þee alle þise fifty wynter, [*]
3040 I shal assoille þee myself for a seem of whete,
3041 And also be þi b[audekyn} and bere wel þi message [*]
3042 Amonges kny3tes and clerkes conscience to torne."
3043 Thanne Mede for hire mysdedes to þat man kneled
3044 And shrof hire of hire sherewednesse, shamelees I trowe,
3045 Tolde hym a tale and took hym a noble
3046 Forto ben hire Bedeman and hire brocour als.
3047 Thanne he assoilled hire soone, and siþen he seide:
3048 "We haue a wyndow {a} werchynge wole sitten vs ful hye. [*]
3049 Woldestow glaze þat gable & graue þer þy name,[*]
3050 Syker sholde þi soule be heuene to haue."
3051 "Wiste I þat," quod þat womman, "I wolde no3t spare
3052 For to be youre frend, frere, and faile yow neuere
3053 While ye loue lordes þat lecherie haunten
3054 And lakkeþ no3t ladies þat louen wel þe same;
3055 It is a freletee of flessh --ye fynden it in bokes-- [*]
3056 And a cours of kynde wherof we comen alle.
3057 Who may scape {þe} sclaundre, þe scaþe is soone amended.
3058 It is synne of þe seuene sonnest relessed."
3059 "Haue mercy," quod Mede, "of men þat it haunteþ,
3060 And I shal couere youre kirk, youre cloistre do maken,
3061 Wowes do whiten, and wyndowes glazen,
3062 Do peynten and portraye [who] paie[d] for þe makynge, [*]
3063 That euery segge shal {see} I am suster of youre house."[*]
3064 Ac god to alle good folk swich grauynge defendeþ,
3065 To writen in wyndowes of hir wel dedes,
3066 An auenture pride be peynted þere and pomp of þe world,
3067 For crist knoweþ þi conscience and þi kynde wille
3068 And þi cost and þi coueitise and who þe catel ou3te.
3069 Forþi I lere yow lordes, leueþ swiche werkes, [*]
3070 To writen in wyndowes of youre wel dedes
3071 Or to greden after goddes men whan ye [gyue] doles, [*]
3072 An auenture ye haue youre hire here and youre heuene als.
Nesciat sinistra quid faciat dextra
3073 Lat no3t þi left half, late ne raþe,
3074 Wite what þow werchest wiþ þi ri3t syde,*
3075 For þus by{t} [god in] þe gospel goode men doon hir almesse.[*]
3076 Maires and Maceres, þat menes ben bitwene
3077 þe kyng and þe comune, to kepe þe lawes,
3078 To punysshe on Pillories and pynynge stooles [*]
3079 Brewesters and Baksters, Bochiers and Cokes;[*]
3080 For þise are men on þis molde þat moost harm werchep[*]
Selective Textual Notes (Ax, Bx, Cx = A,
B, C archetypes respectively)
Readers should be aware that these notes represent one moment in
an ongoing discussion among editors about the text and no one's final
thoughts. The full evidence in many cases is not yet available. Nevertheless,
it seems useful to represent here some of our initial disagreements about
the nature of different kinds of evidence and the weight to be attached
to each kind.
1 Were it not that Langland uniquely makes use
of mute staves (unstressed but alliterating syllables), the b-verse would
be unmetrical in all three versions. In view of the agreement of AC
with Bx, metrical lections in BmBoCot (and some A manuscripts)
with omitted "and" and in C2F (omitting "hem") are probably scribal.Back
2 The second with is probably archetypal,
though Hm2CrGOC2BMH all omit it, as do versions AC. Kane-Donald-
son and Schmidt rightly take it to be otiose. A-verses beginning with
with of the structure PP + cj + PP, where the preposi- tion of
the second PP may be expressed or deleted, appear another 30 times in
B. The preposition is repeated primarily in constructions in
which it is needed to provide a second or third unstressed syllable
in the medial dip:
-
-
- 5.86 With werkes or with wordes ....
- 5.600 With no lede but with Loue ....
- 9.4 With wynde and with water ....
- 13.289 With inwit and with outwitt ....
With tends to be suppressed when the noun head of the prepositional
phrase is trisyllabic or other unstressed syllables intervene, e.g.:
- P.41 With her belies and her bagges ....
- 5.89 With bakbitynge and bismer ....
- 7.12 With patriarkes and prophetes ....
The only apparent exception to this tendency appears in 20.124:
- With glosynges and with gabbynges ....
However, in that verse, about half the witnesses also omit the metrically
and syntactically otiose second with. That is, C2GYOCBR lack
it, while WHmCrLMF have it. The pattern of agree- ment is interesting
enough to check into further when all tran- scriptions are available.
Back
3 Kane-Donaldson and Schmidt reverse the
archetype's kan I, following AC and BH. However, the
BH reading for the b-verse, y can not telle his name, does
not lend confidence that those scribes preserve an authorial reading
save by chance. I kan is slightly more to be expected on purely
statistical metrical grounds, but the archetypal reading is not impossible,
nor even improbable. Back
-
4 The difference between W's maken
and archetypal make is perhaps not addressable, though the
fact that it is only metrically substantive makes it no less substantive.
W's dialect tends to be reflected in infinitives and plurals being
written with the n more often than not. However, an uncovered
final -e lends itself to elision before a vowel or unstressed
syllable beginning with h, and this b-verse, though not unmetrical
with three syllables in the dip, was probably sounded by Langland
with only two. A definitive note on this topic cannot be written until
all of the transcriptions are completed.Back
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6 This line may alliterate on /w/, in which
case F will have uniquely preserved archetypal "wy3e" and the alpha
family's "world" would make a metrical aa|ax line: "What wy3e of
þis world þat hire were leuest." On the other hand,
the line may alliterate on /m/, as the beta manu- scripts and
R suggest, reading ("man"); in this case the betafamily's "molde"
would also be genuine, and an emenda- tion from two A-version
mss, K and E, is required to make the b-verse alliterate ("most leue"
replacing "leuest"). The apparent advantage of the /w/ option as requiring
less alteration to the putative archetype is outweighed by a concordance
check of the relative volatility of the three key words ("wy3e / wi3te,"
"world," and "molde") in scribal copying . Only once in seven- teen
other occurrences throughout the entirety of the B-version
does a scribe transpose archetypal/authorial "wy3e / wi3te" to "man"
(at Skeat Prol. 207, where R does so). If /w/ is chosen as the alliterative
pattern for 3.006, we must assume that R made the same mistake at
least one more time. Moreover, we must assume that the beta archetype
transposed authorial "world" to "molde," but out of forty-five other
occurrences of this word in B, only once does a scribe change
it to "moolde" (at Skeat 10.024, where F does so). These probabilities
look remote when compared to the likelihood that "molde" was transposed
scribally to "world", in turn causing the poetaster who copied F to
hypercorrect his first stave to "wy3e" from "man." "Molde" registers
fourteen occurrences in B, and in five of these cases, involving
four different manuscripts, it is transposed to "erthe" (twice) and
"world" (three times: at Skeat 1.044, 2.037, and 9.082).
-
Hanna, on the other hand, citing AC agreement in reading
"world," argues for alliteration on /w/. Alliteration in that case
would fall on "What," "world," and "were."Back
7 We have not reached agreement on the a-verse.
Hanna, citing general confirmation from AC readings, argues
that the a-verse should read "And if she werche bi wit," since
qualifying wit with mi misses the point. Adams, on the
other hand, points out that the two "my"'s reiterate the king's blind
self-absorption at this point in the narrative.Back
-
9 The paraph marks are placed where W has
them. We will not be able to survey the manu- scripts for textual
divisions until all the transcriptions have been completed. They may
or may not be significant features of the original.Back
-
10 Alliteration fails in the archetype.
F's mente is more likely to have been a brilliant conjecture
on the part of that scribe than to have descended through a line of
direct copying. If Kane-Donaldson's argument is correct that F had
access to a manuscript closer to the original than the archetype (see
Duggan, "Notes toward a Theory of Langland's Meter," 51-2, for a discussion
of the problems), emendation to mened "guided, directed" [MED
ménen v.(4)] is required. Kane [Piers Plowman: The A
Ver- sion, 2nd ed. (1988)] correctly emends his text of A
to that reading. In our view, the fact that Langland revised his B
text from a corrupt A manuscript suggests that he did not notice
the error. In some sense of the term, he accepted the scribal error,
though had the error been called to his attention, he almost certainly
would have corrected it. That appears to be the most reasonable explanation
for his revised line in C: Took Mede by þe myddel
and myldeliche here brouhte (C.III.10).
-
Our final reading for this line will have to wait until we have
re-evaluated the evidence for the relation of F to the archetype.Back
11 The b-verse of this line looks too short
to be metrical, but analogy with similar b-verses at Skeat 2.119,3.176,
and 3.219 suggests that final -e of "Mede" should be sounded
to produce the requisite strong dip. But cf. Skeat 3.226, where a
parallel phrase requires a monosyllabic pronunciation of the same
word to fulfill a different metrical constraint, viz., that there
be only one strong dip in a b-verse. See Duggan, "Langland's Dialect
and Final - e," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990):
175-76) for discussion of the forms of Mede.Back
-
12 worshiped/worchepe: We are uncertain
at this point in how to weigh the contradictory evidence. The choice
is between R's agreement with several good beta manuscripts
(CCrHmHm2L0Y) with the tense in the preterit and F's agreement with
W and AC in the present tense. Either lection makes adequate
sense in context.Back
-
15 To conforten/Conforted: We have
not reached agreement. B reads and comforteþ; H reads
And comforthyd, and all other B witnesses read To
conforte(n). Kane-Donaldson follow AC in reading Comforted.
We must determine in such cases whether to emend when archetypal stylistic
variations from AC occur and when no metrical, semantic, or
grammatical grounds exist for repudiat- ing attestation of the B
witnesses.Back
-
19 Conscience: Kane retained copy
text's consciences in his edition of A against the preponderance
of manuscript evidence. Kane-Donaldson, in editing B emended
against all the B witnesses except F (in this case R reads
with the beta family). We have retained archetypal conscience,
since an s- less genitive following word-terminal /s/ is common
in Middle English. See Tauno F. Mustanoja, A Middle English Syntax:
Part I. Parts of Speech. Mémoires de la Société
Néophilologique de Helsinki 23 (Helsinki: Société
Néophilologique, 1961): 72-73.Back
-
23 richesses: RF's singular richesse
is unmetrical and unlikely to be authorial. Though Kane's A
text has the singular reading, the majority of A manuscripts
supports the plural as well. Back
-
31 þe(2): all B readings
reflect at confused with atte "at the" under the influence
of the preceding phrase. Cf. AC "at."
-
hire: attestation is against W's having the correct reading
against the B archetype, but it is clearly correct.Back
33 Probably it is coincidental variation
that F G supply wel, perhaps on the mistaken view that the
line alliterates on /w/, i.e., on worþ, -uaunced,
and wel? The original is more likely to have been alliterated
on /f/ ~ /v/, i.e., on first, -uaunced, and the mute-stave
for.Back
-
36 The redundancy of lines 36-37 in Bx
seems inconsistent with Langland's normal practice. The fact that
the only part of these lines unique to B, the b-verse, is what
creates this redundancy makes this an obvious candidate for retro-emendation
to A's reading. Also it should be noted that, when Langland
revised B to C, he eliminated this redundancy (indicating his
disapproval of it) but left the substance of the passage unchanged.
Back
-
38 F's inversion of archetypal lewed
men and lered men to leernede men & lewed men agrees with
AC and possibly reflects his access to a pre-archetypal version
of B, as Kane-Donaldson have argued.Back
-
39 The pattern of scribal change appears
to be that archetypal "Fals[h]ede hadde" (seen in R) first deteriorates
to "Fals hadde" (in Hm) and "Fals haue" (in F) because of hypercorrection
of apparent dittography ("hede/hadde"), but then is followed by the
creation of a new suffix - nesse in all other MSS. The same
distribution of variants exists in A.
-
Evaluation of Kane-Donaldson's acceptance of F's þey
"though" must await determination of their hypothesis that F had access
to a pre-archetypal manuscript. See notes 10 and 38 above.Back
41 baudekyn: this nonce word appears
only in A, and the change in Bx to bedman reflects
contamination with the punning line 46 below. Though MED s.v.
(bede-man n. 2) glosses this instance of bedman as "An
official spokesman, a crier, a messanger," and cites one other instance,
that second instance is misinterpreted there and should be placed
under sense 3.
-
message/erende: we have not reached agreement on this reading;
erende is in no B manuscript, but it supported in AC.Back
48 sitten: meaning "oppress" or,
metaphorically, "cost," is justified by Skeat 2.140 / Skeat C 3.154
("Hit shal sitte 3oure soules . ful soure at the laste"). See
OED s.v. "Sit", v., II.15 = "grieve, vex." The fact
that Ax and Cx read "stonden" here cannot outweigh the
attestation of Bx to a perfectly suitable alterna- tive. Much
random authorial variation of this sort is observable throughout the
poem's three versions. Back
-
49 þer/þerInne: the b-verse
is a bit heavy with Bx's þerInne, and agreement
of AC in the metrically more regular reading makes Kane-Donaldson's
emendation attractive. We have not reached a decision about the text
here.Back
-
55 There is some reason to think that finde,
attested in CrGYC2CBmBoLMH, is more likely to be original than W's
finden. Though W's metrical pattern x/xxx/x is not unmetrical,
an uncovered final -e would elide to produce the more common
form x/xx/x.Back
-
62 The C version of this line is much more
apposite. The Bx reading is implicitly redundant and limp.
The smoothing one must assume to have taken place here at an early
stage of B's transmission is easy to account for in terms of
the syntactic complexity of a series of clauses with auxiliary verbs
and no repetition of subject. Back
-
63 see: RF are supported against
the beta witnesses by AC. The b- verse is unmetrical
unless I am is contracted to "I'm." Such contractions are rarely
reflected in late medieval manuscript spelling, but occasional verses
such as this support our sense that such contractions were a feature
of the language.Back
-
69 Both the other versions read "writynge(s)
here, in place of B's "werkes." However, Bx appears
genuine and motivated by Langland's desire to avoid redundan- cy with
the Ax / Bx line head that immediately follows, "To
writen." Cx can return to the more specific "writynges" of
the first version because the following phrase, "To writen," has now
been completely dropped. Back
-
71 As it stands, Bx is clearly deficient
in alliteration (aa|xx). Cf. Ax, where "dele" also occurs as
a minority reading competing with authorial "gyue." Back
-
75 Bx is obviously lacking a stave
word here. No parallel line exists in the other versions. Kane-Donaldson's
proposed emendation, based on the occurrence of the same phrase at
Skeat 10.261, and a similar one at 10.474, deserves to be adopted.
Back
-
76-78 The problem with this passage is that,
in both Ax and Bx, an inept example of anacoluthon occurs:
one never finishes the original point about "mayors and macers." Cx
borrows a line found properly at a later point in the discourse (Skeat
C 4.077 / 4.115) in a vain effort to reduce this sense of incompleteness.
One possible cure would be to emend our line 78's initial infinitive,
"To punysshe" to an indicative "punysshe." Unfortunately, there is
no support for such a change among the witnesses.
-
Though the b-verse is metrical as it stands, we are tempted to follow
Kane-Donaldson in following accepting FH's on to make the metrically
more regular and on pynynge stooles.Back
79 Brewester and Baksters: Though
Bx may have been prompted by antifeminist sentiment to substitute
these forms with the suffix -stere (< OE -estre) for
AC's Brewers and Bakers, Langland himself may have in
revision used a set of (by then) synonymous terms. Given the range
of meanings attested in ME, the terms are gender neutral.Back
-
80 The b-verse has a mute stave, with stress
falling on harm; else the verse is unmetrical.Back
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Copyright (c) 1994 by Hoyt N. Duggan, all rights reserved.
Last Modified: Friday, 23-Sep-1994 13:02:11 EDT
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