Piers Plowman: Prologue Summary & Analysis

Will’s sheep-like clothing suggests that Will is pretending to be holy and pure, just like a hermit who doesn’t actually live a morally upright life or do any good works (like feeding the hungry or caring for the sick) Will may look like a good Christian, even to himself, but he isn’t. The rest of the poem will first reveal this to him and send him on a quest to understand what being a good Christian entails.

In Will’s first dream vision—an allegorical dream that imparts the dreamer with truth—he sees a “field full of folk,” which symbolizes society on a local and global scale. Will’s description of society illustrates what the social structure was like in Medieval England. The three estates, or social classes, are the clergy (first estate), nobility (second estate), and peasantry (third estate). Immediately, the poem seems critical of the first estate. Contrasting from the humble, hardworking peasants are deceitful, greedy friars and lazy hermits. 

Pardoners were messengers who distributed pardons—the lessening of one’s punishment in Purgatory, as granted by the Pope. However, pardoners didn’t have the power to actually absolve people of their sins. Thus, the pardoner here exploits his job title for financial gain, just like the priests and bishops who perform their services for silver and serve the rich nobility more dutifully than the Church. Put more bluntly: this part of the poem describes corruption in the Church.

Kind Wit, who represents common sense, is the first of many allegorical figures (ideas or concepts embodied as people) that appear in the poem. In the social system he helps create—which the poem holds up as an ideal structure for society so long as each part of it acts morally and according to Christian teachings—each estate (social class) in society is responsible for a certain task that will help the community. Kind Wit also establishes “lewte,” which is a medieval word that means justice but has a heavy emphasis on relationships that the modern word “justice” lacks.

The court procession of the rats is suggestive of the Good Parliament of 1376, which addressed royal corruption. Thus, the cat symbolizes the dangers of such unbridled power. The allusion to the Good Parliament of 1376 is helpful in dating this version of Piers Plowman (the B-text), suggesting that it is a product of the late 1370s.

Using the mouse as a mouthpiece, the poem’s author William Langland highlights that while the cat may be cruel and corrupt, the answer is not for the common people to revolt because they are incapable of ruling themselves. Should the common people gain power, Langland asserts, they, too, would fall into corruption and unearth an entirely new crop of problems. While the poem consistently highlights the problems in society, it never advocates destroying the underlying structure of society—instead it asserts that if people were to play their role as they should, then this structure will result in an ideal society. Of historical note is that, even though the Good Parliament of 1376 brought some success (impeaching several government ministers), all of these successes were undone the following year—similar to the way the rats’ plan is undone.

The busy “field full of folk” centers on earthly pleasures—beer, meat, fresh bread, fancy wine, fine clothes. This emphasis on the physical world sets the stage for a lesson from Will’s first allegorical teacher.