the geographical shape of the “Visio.” The first two dreams mirror one another in terms of geographical movement. The first begins with the dreamer on the Malvern Hills and viewing, in the main, an indeterminate but possibly East Midland (cf. 2.114, more explicit materials at A 2.72–76, B 2.108–12) rural locale; from this, the action passes to the central court, Westminster, at 2.148–203. The second vision reverses this movement: Reason’s sermon takes place “byfore þe kyng” (113), but the pilgrims to Truth eventually move out to the provinces again at 7.155–60, 182. And a symmetrical reference to the dreamer on Malvern, inherited from AB, occurs at 9.296. Thus, waking in a London neighborhood corresponds to the movement of the narrative. But simultaneously, this new passage disrupts the single Malvern scene inhabited by the dreamer in the AB “Visio” (not to mention the temporal unity of AB, in which the two dreams occupy but a single morning). This disruption may be responsible for the additional (and awkward) reference to Malvern unique to C (5.110). See further Prol.5n, 9.296n.
This geographical placement helps to establish one of the two discursive frameworks within which L constructs the scene, statute law. Ample evidence, signaled by the use of whan (which implies a temporary residence), implies that Cornhill is not the dreamer’s proper locale. Not only does the remainder of the “Visio” occur during a Malvern morning, but, as M. L. Samuels argues (1988:201–12), L’s speech reflects the dialect of the same area, southwestern Worcestershire. Will is not in his home country, as Middleton (1990:55–59) trenchantly demonstrates. Indeed, the C Version, as she notes, pays tribute to this out-of-placeness by disrupting the B dreamer’s anagrammatic signature Wille Longe-Londe (B 15.152); cf. the replacement line “Ich haue yleued in londone monye longe ʓeres” (16.288; cf. 5.24n). As a wanderer, and (as he admits; see 7–8n) an able-bodied one, he is potentially subject to all the strictures enshrined in successive promulgations of the Statute of Laborers (see especially 35–44n).
1 Thus y awakede: The boundary between the poem’s first and second dreams differs in C and in AB. In the earlier versions, the first dream ends within this passus (at A 5.3, B 5.3), and the dreamer manages only five or six lines awake before succumbing again. But in C, the final line of the preceding passus announces the dreamer’s waking, and this line only reiterates the fact, while beginning to establish the very specific parameters through which the dreamer’s waking life is represented. The same fastidiousness in achieving harmony of scene and passus boundaries occurs at the juncture of C passūs 7 and 8 (see 7.307–8n).
As Middleton notes (1997:211–12, 269–70), in certain respects this juncture between two dreams is the most important of the poem. The extension of PP past a single dream marks the difference between this poet and poem and any possible vernacular predecessor, e.g., W&W. The possibility of a second dream institutes the peculiar form of PP, its reliance on episodic, mirroring, and often ruptured or inconclusive visions (cf. Middleton 1982 and see further 11n).
Moreover, the waking interlude here also reveals something of L’s sense of poetic structure. As I will indicate at many points (see the preceding note and esp. 8.19–55n), the poem’s second vision deliberately mirrors the first, in the main by social inversion (cf. Middleton 2013:121–24). It thus establishes one basic pattern in the poem, the arrangement of its eight “outer” dreams into four pairs. Here the waking scene creates a further structural balance. It answers the last waking interlude in the poem, the dreamer’s meeting with Need (22.1–52): just as that conversation separates the next-to-last and last visions of PP, so this one separates the first and second visions. And these two waking scenes raise similar thematic concerns—the degree to which the dreamer may be conceived to be licitly indigent, free to take what he pleases for his survival without regard to contemporary expectations about labor (see Middleton 1997:234–35, 270–72).
——— whan y wonede in Cornehull: Pearsall notes that Cornhill “had something of a reputation as a resort of London vagabonds” (cf. Hanawalt 2005:1069–71); he cites “London Lickpenny” 85–88 for the stolen-clothes market there (he might have noted the connection with its proprietors, the vphalderes of 6.374 and 12.216–18). But although the locale may have spawned its own route of ratones, it was also a place (as Pearsall sees) associated with the imposition of severe judicial punishments, the site both of a prison, the Tun, and of a pillory and stocks. Indeed, London legislation of 1359 specifically cites these stocks as those to which officials of all wards should bring false beggars capable of labor (Clopper 1992:19). See also Benson 2000.
2 Kytte and y: At 20.469, Kytte reappears—at that point probably as the dreamer’s wife (and mother of his child; cf. the actions of my wyf at 22.193). But ME wife n. is ambiguous, either “woman” or “wife,” and Kit’s status here remains unclear. Given the next line and Will’s association with—and concomitant efforts to distinguish himself from—lewede Eremytes, Kit may be simply his concubine, one of those “Walsingham wenches” L has described at Prol.52. And as I have pointed out (1997:32–34), some evidence for married hermits does exist.
The name Kit, just like that of the daughter Calot who also appears at 20.469, identifies the figure as a “type-female.” The derived common noun a kitte (7.304) refers to a wife; Kitte is also the (type-)name of the cunning tapster who dupes the Pardoner in the “Prologue to the Tale of Beryn” (see lines 65–66), and the phrase “lewde kitt(is)” describes tricky women there (lines 443–46) and as a plausible emendation at Mum 1357 (in a passage inspired by PP, perhaps this locus). Mustanoja (1970:70) provides telling examples of pet-names for Katherine to define stock feminine “abuses.” He thus cites N-Town Plays, EETS ss 11, 139/15 and 17, respectively, for Kate kell (Katherine with her hairnet?) and Kytt cakelere (Kitty, who will not—like all women—keep her mouth shut). Rather than a discernible person, L’s wife, Kytte may just represent a type—female companionship, with all those irritations misogynists, like the author of the “Prologue to Beryn,” comment upon. See further 128n below.
Indeed, in many respects Will’s sexuality is a synecdoche for his identity. It is obviously relevant to two of the signatures Middleton identifies (1990:44–52, 74): “þe longe launde þat leccherie hatte” (A 11.118) and “þe londe of longynge and loue” (B 11.8). One might compare further Wit’s endorsement of sexuality at B 9.182–86L, a passage that suggests that the dreamer here is still yong and yeep; Concupiscentia Carnis offers similar counsel at 11.176–80, and Imaginative recalls Will’s “wilde wantownesse whiles þow yong were” (B 12.6). Will’s life, as he describes it here (cf. his locution, “louede wel fare” 8), is one of desire and self-indulgence; cf. the “unreasonable” life of mankind 13.151–55. In the context of Will’s later claim to perfection and a special status that would underwrite his life, and thus his poetry (see 84n below for its relation to passus 11), the repetition of the name Kitte at 7.304 (see 7.292–306n) is perhaps especially damning: Luke 14, the same biblical locus from which L will identify at 7.81–118L a blessed form of “minstrelsy,” equally condemns the man overly solicitous about his kitte.
However, Kytte has normally been read here as a wife and the dreamer as some variety of failed priest, a possibility that gains some credence from Lister M. Matheson’s discovery that a “William Rokayle” was ordained to first tonsure by Wolstan de Bransford, bishop of Worcester, before 1341 (announced Hanna 2000:187). Donaldson (1949:206–8) analyzes the priestly dreamer’s relation to ordo. In his lengthy discussion, for the most part based on William Lyndwood’s Provinciale, Donaldson identifies L’s dreamer as an acolyte. Upon his marriage, he says (206–7), Will would have entered an anomalous status. He could not have advanced beyond his current rank and would have been unable to serve at the altar, thus incapable of fulfilling a truly clerical function and resembling a layperson (hence the embarrassment of Reason’s opening question in 12); but so long as he retained his tonsure (which he apparently has done; see 56) and wore appropriate clerical clothing (see the next note but one), he would have retained his privilegium clericale (see 59–60n).
Will’s
