of the Pardoner’s performance, “For though myself be a ful vicious man, | A moral tale yet I you telle kan” (VI.459–60), resonates strikingly with Will’s presentation and behavior here. Implicitly, H. Marshall Leicester, Jr.’s witty reading of the Pardoner as D. W. Robertson (1990:35–64) addresses relevant issues.
However, various details of self-presentation might imply that the Pardoner shows nothing other than Ch’s parodic reading of L’s poetic. (For a similar reading of Chaucerian revision of PP, see Grady 1996.) Like our poet, the Pardoner delights in dropping in bits of Latin (CT VI.344–46), as well as (if not biblical, at least “olde”) examples to stir his auditors’ benefactions; and he shows a similar propensity to lakke others publicly (cf. B 5.86n).
Moreover, in his most extensive description of his practice (435–54), the Pardoner implicitly riffs on a biblical verse integral to Will’s self-portrayal, Luke 16:3 (see 22–25n). Like Will, he defines his “profession” as neither labor nor beggary, but gainful and efficacious nonetheless. The range of Langlandian detail Ch allows his character to enunciate might be extended considerably, e.g., the Pardoner’s eunuchry, a cruel reflection of 22/B 20.193–98, or his association of undesirable labor and basketmaking a slighting depiction of Will’s claim to quasi-eremetic status (cf. 17.13–18 [B 15.286–91]).
——— in a cote: Such an abode implies that here the dreamer is just hanging on, living on next to nothing. The citations presented by MED stress the tininess of such hovels and the poverty of those inhabiting them. The term looks ahead to the depiction of grinding, mostly rural, poverty in passus 9, where the cote, in that context both “cottage” and “coat,” effectively cloaks the poor from scrutiny. See further 9.72, 85 and nn, as well as 1–108n above.
——— yclothed as a lollare: Will shortly (41) refers to his garments as longe clothes. And they are presumably the same “shroude” he makes for himself at Prol.3; for further references to hermit clothing, see, e.g., 10.1, 15.3, B 13.284–85, 20.1. Compare also the description of self-made hermits’ garments at Prol.53–55, 8.182–87 and the logic underlying the assumption of such garments by unqualified “lollares” and “Ermytes,” apparently identical persons, at 9.204–12. These latter passages indicate that such garments deliberately imitate the opulent copes of friars, always (from Prol.59 on) described as if marking both a steady income and impressive clerical status. MED fails to note “longe clothes” as a technical term for some kind of habit, what Wood-Legh (1965:247 and n. 1) describes as a “supertunica.” She tells of a fourteenth-century clerk in Lincoln diocese who objected to such a habit because of the very pretensions that may render it attractive both to Will and to “lollares,” “since long, tight-fitting supertunice are most appropriate for learned men and men appointed to important offices, not for simple priests” (cum supertunice longe et clause non simplicibus sacerdotibus, sed doctoribus et viris preclaris in dignitate constitutis maxime conveniant). And although “longe goune” seems only a common adjective + noun phrase, the one MED citation not from a will or account describes Wycliffe’s early disciples “dwellynge in Oxenforde, goynge barefote with longe gownes of russet” (the Harley Higden continuation of c. 1405–10, RS 8:444); for the contentious descriptions of Lollard clothing, see Hudson 1988:144–47. For the as that frequently accompanies descriptions of the dreamer’s clothing or general demeanor, cf. Prol.1–4n and 20.2n.
At least one major impulse behind the subsequent confrontation with Reason is precisely the desire to explicate this complex of issues. If PP reflects a personal longing to understand salvation in some experiential fashion, what animates the person engaged in this pursuit? From what perspective can he claim, as an individual, any warrant (or license; see 5.45–52n) for his desire to avoid all “normal” forms of work to pursue understanding and, then, to write his quest? And what might lead him to believe that he can efficaciously pursue topics over which greater (and better equipped) minds have fretted for centuries?
The dreamer customarily approaches the question, a major theme in the second vision, in two ways. On the one hand, he seeks to accommodate his disorderly appearance to that of some status that might confer upon its holder license and authority. More positively, as he does with lollares here, he attempts constructive redefinitions of terms in such a way as to distinguish himself from those negative examples with which he might be confused. But this very attempt proves every bit as problematic as the impulse that drives it. The dreamer looks like a lollare but will quickly claim (3–5) to be the enemy of such persons; yet on the other hand, whatever his claims to some responsible clerical status (see 5.35–67), these may already have been qualified by his status as sexual being.
The word lollare—and L is the first English writer known to use the noun—has obviously been the site of numerous contentions; for discussion in various veins, see Scase 1989:147–55; Middleton 1997:242–43, 276–88, 291; Cole 2003, 2003a, 2008:25–45; Pearsall 2003; on L and his relation to specific Wycliffite points of doctrine, see Gradon 1980; Lawton 1981; Hudson 1988:398–408, 2003, von Nolcken 1988; Bowers 1992 is distinctly odd man out.
lollare appears a single time in the B Version, at 15.213, “[Charity] lyueþ noʓt in lolleris ne in londleperis heremytes.” This usage occurs within the important passage (B 15.198–215) that introduces Piers as scrutinizer of wills and “as if Christ.” The sense here, “gyrovague, feigning holy man” (cf. þei faiten B 15.214), appears consonant with the remainder of L’s uses, without exception. In this context, in contrast to Piers, who looks like a grubby plowman and yet, in the exegetical discourse from which “id est” is derived, “is” Christ, lollares cloak a worldly will in the ostentatious garb of holiness. In Will’s first attempt, of a number of efforts in C, to subsume the role of Piers, he here develops his sense of his own “good will,” as opposed to theirs (cf. 61–69n).
This appearance of the word in B 15.213, which must indicate its currency in the 1370s, predates the word lollard, to indicate “Wycliffite believer.” As is well known, the earliest record of that term occurs in mid-1382, when Henry Crumpe, who had been a member of the Blackfriars Council that condemned a selection of Wycliffe’s opinions in May, was suspended from the University of Oxford for using the term Lollardi derogatorily of the theologian’s adherents (see Hudson 1988:2–4, 87–88). Thus, these two terms are distinct, and, as several commentators have pointed out (Pearsall nn. passim and 2003, Cole 2003), like the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, contemporary issues “overtook the poem.” A word L had used in one sense had become, in current religious culture, so similar as to be potentially associable with another, and with another sense—not necessarily what the poet had had in mind at all.
Moreover, as I am grateful to Michael G. Sargent for pointing out to me, the two terms must be seen as etymologically distinct (whatever the hash OED and MED make of reporting their various uses). lollare is a transparent actant noun in OE -ere, and L at 9.214–19 offers an etymology that purports to link the noun with a parallel English verb, lollen (see further the note there). In contrast, lollard must represent a loan word from a Continental language; see the discussion at OED -ard suffix and Hudson’s reference 1988:2 n.4. Unfortunately, in contemporary usage, the two separate items had overlapped by 1390 (cf. OED’s comments on -ard/-art replacing -er/-ar in many words—a fact which implies that, confusingly, the reverse might occur as well), as the variants in Ch’s Man of Law’s Endlink will indicate. (Quite in contrast to variable Chaucerian scribal usage, only one PP manuscript, the Irish Douce 104, copied 1427, shows any evidence of having fused the words, and that fitfully; much more frequently, when they err, the scribes of PP follow the poet, who occasionally implies that a proper synonym for the word might well be lorel/losel; cf. 8.74, 9.137.)
As I have suggested above, B 15.213 proves entirely consonant with the poet’s usage elsewhere—and having been virtually invisible in the earlier versions, lollare appears in C thirteen times. Like Pearsall (2003), I doubt very much whether this profusion reflects
