moment, and thus that many ʓer hennes is exaggerated.
But the dreamer, conscious that he faces interrogation under the 1388 Statute, has very good reason to emphasize his youthful education. In the absence of his dead frendes, it may be his only claim not to be required to perform agricultural labor, for the Statute declares that “He or she, which use to labour at the Plough and Cart, or other Labour or Service of Husbandry, till they be of the Age of Twelve years, that from thenceforth they shall abide at the same Labour, without being put to any Mystery or Handicraft” (12 Rich. II, c. 5; SR 2:57). Merchandising and guild crafts had always been considered occupations that placed one outside those restrictions addressed to agricultural labor (see 23 Edw. III, c. 1; SR 1:307); the 1388 Parliament, in keeping with its desire to impress apprentices for field work (see 12–21n above), sought to close off one possible evasion of manual labor by limiting entry to mercantile or craft status altogether. The argument looks ahead to Will’s claim to a quasiaristocratic status at line 54, and L will return to another version of this scenario at 9.204–13L; there he worries self-protectively over the genesis of lewede Ermytes out of such a cadre of disaffected agrarian teenagers. With both this passage and that in C 9, compare the diatribe at JU 40–47, directed against those “comoun peple” who “leue her trewe laboure and bicome idil men,” especially feigned religious.
The reference to this particular statutory prohibition may indicate L’s knowledge of more than the published statute. For as Tuck demonstrates (1969), the Commons petition from which the Statute derives takes an even narrower view of this point. Commons (as Tuck shows, reported at Westminster Chronicle 363) wishes to prohibit either laborers or their children from learning any craft, should they be required in agriculture. Reason’s usage, Can thow 12, implies that knowing how to perform field work (as, for example, the knight does not at 8.19–22) would identify Will as a laborer’s child and without real recourse under the Commons petition. Will subsequently takes up the Commons’s position as his own; cf. children 68. See further 44n.
In line 36, the dreamer avails himself of the logical opening Reason has provided at lines 26–27 (and will turn this argument violently against his interlocutor at 53–67). He has had a fyndyng. And his youthful training emphatically distances him both from those hermits whom he defines as lewede in line 4 (see further 45–52n) and from Sloth at 7.53–54L. (See further Godden 1984:154.) Moreover, in this return to origins, L’s language comes closest to that of Wimbledon’s sermon; in his own account, at least, Will’s youthful preparation has instilled in him ideals of which the homilist would have approved: “Who stirid þe to take vpon þe so hiʓe astaate? Wheþer for þou woldest lyue on Goddis contemplacion, oþer forto lyue a delicious lif vpon oþer mennis trauayle and þyself trauayle nouʓt? Why also setten men here sones oþer here cosynes to scole? Wheþer forto gete hem grete auauncementis oþer to make hem þe betere to knowen how þey shulden serue God?” (lines 181–87).
The passage has often been pressed hard for biographical detail about L. Skeat wished to associate the scole, apparently as a guess faute de mieux, with a grammar school at Great Malvern Priory (to which L would have been sent as a younger son; see 2:xxxii). Pearsall (24n) believes the word specifically refers to university training—interrupted when L lost his support through death. More recent students, e.g., Galloway (1992:93–95, 97) and Hanna (1993:18–21), have emphasized the ambiguity of the passage, the extent to which it fails to provide any very specific information about Will’s career, much less L’s.
However, two details perhaps imply that Pearsall’s view is at least tilted toward the more likely extreme. First, Tyl y 37 implies that Will’s training may have persisted for quite some time. Certainly, his claims for knowledge of Holy Scripture (37–39), readily substantiated in the poem, of course, imply an education beyond simply the basics, some training in sacra pagina. And further, the economics of fourteenth-century education suggests that frendes (either “relatives” or “supporters, patrons,” MED frend, senses 4 and 1b, respectively) would probably have been necessities only for expensive university training. Cf. Chaucer’s Clerk at CT I.299–302.
Some such training may lie behind various of the dreamer’s antics in early sections of the search for Dowel. For example, at 10.20, he adopts a manner that he identifies as clerk[ly] (while implying that he is not such a person). Moreover, his performance there shows some knowledge (not extending either to a full citation of the Bible or to a deep understanding of syllogistic technique) of scholarly disputation (cf. his use of the verb dispute, routinely at this time referring to scholarly debate, as apposen does in some instances, perhaps 1.45 or B 3.5, more likely line 10 above or B 7.144).
Of course, Will’s reported biography does not go very far toward absolving him of Reason’s charges. The labor he claims as appropriately his own is only the residue of higher family plans for him, plans that were never fully completed (cf. the plaintive echo foend 40). Romynge in remembraunce only returns him to that previous frustration, and he cannot imagine an alternative to continuing to be what he was—but no longer licitly is. The case of Covetise, and his youthful fyndynge, provides an instructive parallel; see 6.206–20n and 215n. And further afield, as Middleton (1990:74) argues, the Lollard William Thorpe in 1407 frames his apologia in strikingly similar terms: Thorpe and Will share a common inability to conceive of themselves as anything other than what they originally were. In constructing the entire situation, L may well recall the dire warnings of W&W 7–9: “Dare neuer no westren wy … | Send his sone southewarde to see ne to here | That he ne schall holden byhynde when he hore eldes.”
However, such activity is not quite enough to exculpate the wandering dreamer under the 1388 Statute. For even had he stayed in school long enough to be a university scholar, he could not legally wander to beg without a license. 12 Rich. II, c. 7 (SR 2:58) requires him to carry a testimonial letter from his chancellor; see further 89–91n.
38 as the boek telleth: This off-verse might well be read as an ironic jibe at the alliterative tradition. In such poetry, this is perhaps the most widely attested second half-line, in the great majority of instances a pure throwaway filler; in contrast, for Will, the boek, Holy Scripture, provides the total justification for his activities.
39 by so y wol contenue: RK connect the clause with what precedes, and Skeat and Pearsall1 gloss “provided that I will persevere (in well-doing).” But they ignore the further development, 43–43L, lines that address perseverance directly as vocation. Thus, Galloway (1992:94) plausibly argues for a full stop at mid-line; he would translate, “I wish to continue in this manner,” that is, behave like a scholar all my life. Conscience echoes the line in 104.
The passage hovers between honesty and self-indulgence. The impersonal lykede 41 makes it “not my fault” yet simultaneously asserts “I ought to be able to do what is pleasing to me,” and the concessive 42 “Yf y be laboure sholde lyuen” suggests that hand-work is a responsibility Will would rather not be stuck with.
41 longe clothes: See 2n above.
43L In eadem … : 1 Cor. 7:20 (Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was called) and Eph. 4:1, in the first case (ironically enough, given line 2), part of Paul’s rather crabby discussion of wedlock. Once again, biblical and legal discourse reinforce one another; see 35–44n above. Wimbledon cites this verse (lines 98–100) to indicate the integrity of each estate—and the impermissibility of blending them; more distantly, cf. Shakespeare’s Falstaff, at 1 Henry IV 1.2.91–92.
44 in london and vp london bothe: Will reverts to Statute concerns. Again (as in line 10) RK insert an overly provocative reading (explained p. 154), here from the p manuscripts. But the x reading and opelond bothe (“in the country, too”) is preferable, not least because it alludes to—and defends the dreamer against—the most crucial
