reconciled in this passage)—those favoring labor and those favoring the life of prayer.
22–25 Will as dishonest steward: These lines, as Pearsall suggests (see 1–108n above), cast the scene into the form of gospel parable, the story of the dishonest steward of Luke 16. When his lord hears of his steward’s alleged crimes, he calls him to account (v. 2): “redde rationem villicationis tuae; jam enim non poteris villicare” (give an account of thy stewardship, for thou canst be steward no longer). Holychurch tells Will (1.13–16) that humans are created with unique powers so that they may honor Truth, may exert these powers in a service appropriate to Him: such physical and mental strengths are loans, “talents,” for whose use humans must answer. In these terms, L follows the parable in presenting Reason as a fastidious and terrifying account-keeper (cf. the rationem of Luke 16:2), heaven’s registrar, as Alford (1988b:205–6) notes; for other examples, see B 5.272–73n. Such an accounting accords with Wimbledon’s reading of the parable; cf. lines 136–44 of his sermon.
On hearing this threatening news, the steward of the gospel responds (v. 3): “Quid faciam, quia dominus meus aufert a me villicationem? fodere non valeo, mendicare erubesco” (What shall I do, because my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed). Like the steward, Will claims that he is physically incapable of basic agricultural labor (on diking and delving, see further 6.369 and 8.350n); yet continuing his effort at distinguishing himself from lollers and lewd hermits, he will simultaneously allege that he has a licit vocation, that he is not the sort of begging faitour Reason suspects (29–30). Will’s last statement under interrogation (94–98L) invokes a language of mercantilism equally dependent on the gospel parable and reminiscent of the steward’s unscrupulous charity to debtors, an action that moves his lord.
In the claim of vocation, Will adopts a “modern” reading of the parable, one that uses it as a proof-text in support of learned Latinate activities. Conventionally, readings of Luke 16 follow Bede, In Lucam 5 (PL 92:529–30; CCSL 120:297/esp. 61–65); see Wailes 1987:245–53. In this interpretation, the call to render accounts represents death. “Digging signifies active striving for virtue, which can no longer be pursued after death…. Begging can be either good or bad, for it is good to beg spiritual aid in this life, but evil to reach the time of accounting so destitute of merit that one must beg, as did the five foolish girls of ‘The Ten Virgins’ ” (248). To this reference to Matt. 25:8 (cf. 1.185), Bede subjoins a second, to Prov. 20:4 (which L cites at 8.245L, in another discussion of the refusal to labor). One might further note, given L’s other uses of the parable (see below and 84n), a number of commentators who associate digging with penance (Wailes 249–50; Bede speaks of the “mattock of devout compunction” [lig[o] deuotae compunctionis]). Will develops such argumentation further in 45–52 (see the note); cf. 7.182–204n. Thomas Hoccleve’s self-presentation, with his various worries over his status as royal counsellor, persistently echo L’s preoccupations here and elsewhere; cf. DRP 981–87, 1013–28 (both an appeal for seeing writing as just as back-breaking a labor as agriculture), 1807; and Lawton’s discussion (2011:141–44). Similarly, Rigg and Brewer’s Langlandian enthusiast caught the reference (and its penitential bearings); he ascribes “fodere non valeo” to Robert the robber at Z 5.142.
But equally, there exists a “goliardic” reading of Luke 16:3 that Will adopts as appropriate for his purposes. Mann (1980:85 and n74) notes three uses, in a poem of the Archpoet, in Abelard’s Historia calamitatum (the description of the founding of the Paraclete), and in a hymn. Abelard and the Archpoet both use “fodere non valeo” to reject material physical labor. And they do so—as the Archpoet succinctly puts it, “Fodere non debeo, quia sum scolaris”—in the interest of intellectual labor. For them, as for Will here, clerical privilege should exist and should absolve one of mundane responsibilities routinely expected of others. Will’s continuing conversation with Reason attempts to fill in exactly how a person like him, who lacks overt clerical status, can nonetheless claim such a privilege and claim it in the face of such absolute restrictions on wandering and slothfulness as the 1388 Statute. (See further Middleton 1997:251, 253–54, 309 n57; for L and the goliardic tradition, see B Prol.139–45n.)
L returns to the biblical locus, in terms more nearly resembling Bede and Wimbledon than Will and Abelard, on several occasions; see, for example, 8.234L, 9.273, 19.250L. And the poem includes a rich variety of more distant allusions to the passage, through its reliance both on biblical uses of the verb reddere (including both line 32L below and the climactic 21.258–59) and on English terms derived from the parable situation, e.g., reeue and arrerage at 11.296–98, and more distantly 12.60–71, 13.35, 21.459–64.
But the discourse of gospel parable here flows together with Statute language. Just as Reason in the legal realm, Wimbledon is utterly clear in his belief that the reckoning of Luke 16 requires labor: “he þat is neiþer traueylynge in þis world whanne þe day of his rekenyng comeþ, þat is þe ende of þis lif, ryʓt as he lyuede here wiþoutyn trauayle, so he shal þere lacke þe reward of þe peny, þat is þe endeles ioye of heuene” (alluding to Matt. 20:9, etc.; cf. 7n).
But Will at this moment has caught on to what is at issue in the interrogation and preempts the legal arguments he expects Reason to produce (see 29–30n for the passage in 12 Rich. II at issue). to wayke to wurcche specifies “non valeo” (Luke 16:3) but moves from the gospel to directly answer the language of the Statute: “Beggars impotent to serve (les mendinantz impotentz de servir, viz. to labor in the fields) shall abide in the Cities and Towns where they are dwelling at the Time of the Proclamation of this Statute” (12 Rich. II, c. 7; SR 2:58). Will, of course, quibbles on the degree of “impotence” at issue (see 21n and Reason’s suggestion in lines 33–34 that he demonstrate he has a debilitating injury), but his point is clear enough: as a weak beggar, he has every legal right to be and to remain where he is—in Cornhill. In a similar vein, see 89–91n below.
24 to long: The other explicit reference to the dreamer’s height occurs at 10.68, although it is always implicit in his name (e.g., in the signature at B 15.152). Here he refers to his stature with more than a touch of pride in opposing it to lowness. But (as Skeat first saw) this language, however descriptive physically, includes its own provocations, for it echoes “Grete lobies and longe þat loth were to swynke” (Prol.53) and intensifies Will’s associations with the lollares/lewede Ermytes whom he resembles (see 2n above) while wishing to be differentiated from them (see, e.g., 45–47n below). As Schmidt points out, the line provides only half a signature, thus exposing the dreamer to Reason’s next inquiry, “Thenne hastou londes to lyue by?” (26, my emphasis). On the proverbial suspicion of tall men, see Deskis-Hill 2004.
26–34 Reson seeks clarification from the dreamer: The speech bounces between two poles of Statute discourse. On the one hand, Reason goes out of his way to be helpful and inviting; he feeds Will, as it were, legal lines by which he might justify his failure to labor (e.g., 26–27n and 33–34, lines that echo materials discussed in 21n, 22–25n). But equally, Reason judges the dreamer by his external appearance: either he is idle pure and simple (see 28n) or he can be conflated—as Will’s insistence upon his height has done—with those hermits for whom he has claimed to have deepest (and mutual) antipathy.
26–27 hastow … thy fode: The Statutes of Laborers, directed toward field hands (cf. 8.329), were never meant to apply to those with sufficient land or resources to support themselves. Thus, among the marks that single out the agrarian laborer who is its object, 23 Edw. III, c. 1 (SR 1:307) includes a person “[not] having of his own whereof he may live, nor proper Land (propriam culturam, perhaps ‘his own arable’), about whose Tillage he may himself occupy.”
In very practical terms, Reason asks the dreamer-poet whether he has a patron. The conversation, most especially Will’s response as it develops after line 59, should be compared with 13.104–16, a discussion of ecclesiastical title. (13.111 “no lond ne lynage ryche ne good los
