'In London and opelond': the dialect and circulation of the C version of Piers Plowman.(essay)(Critical essay)

Introduction

In an article on Langland's dialect M. L. Samuels identified the majority of the manuscripts of the C version as belonging to a regionally coherent group whose production and dissemination were focused on the south-west Midlands. (1) The manuscripts were shown to divide into two principal regional clusters which coincided with their textual affiliations: those manuscripts belonging to the/-group were focused on the Malvern area, while the p-group radiated outwards from that centre to adjacent counties: south-east Herefordshire, north Gloucestershire, east Warwickshire, and north Oxfordshire. Such a distribution fits well with the evidence of textual affiliation, with the two great manuscript families found to be closely related in terms of dialect. Furthermore the textually superior i-group focused on Malvern is thus closest to the poet's origins, while the textually inferior p-group shows a more dispersed distribution.

It is of course possible that the dialects of these manuscripts indicate only the dialects of their scribes and not their places of production. A scribe's dialect is a reflection of where he acquired his literacy, rather than an indication of where he copied a particular manuscript. This point was emphasized by the editors of The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English in their introduction, where they state that 'the Atlas tells us, in essence, where the scribe of a manuscript learned to write; the question of where he actually worked and produced the manuscript is a matter of extrapolation and assumption' (their italics). (2) This point is of particular relevance for the identification of London manuscripts, given the evidence that provincial copyists migrated to the capital in search of employment, bringing their native dialects with them. However, Samuels argues that the close correlation between their dialects indicates that the C manuscripts were local productions and not produced in London by immigrant scribes. A useful comparison may be made with the B version manuscripts, many of which were copied in London. The London B manuscripts show a range of different dialects indicating copying by immigrant scribes in London using a variety of dialects. By contrast the C manuscripts show very dose correlation in their dialects which could not be due to the input of a large number of immigrant scribes working in London. As Samuels notes: 'it would therefore be very strange indeed if each C-MS (if written in London) had found a SW Midland scribe.' (3) Samuels goes on to argue that this high concentration of C manuscripts in the south-west Midlands is very unlikely to have occurred without 'an authorial presence' in the area, and he concludes that this provides further support for Skeat's view that Langland returned to Malvern later in his life.

There is an element of circularity in this argument given that Skeat's view of Langland's return to Malvern was in part based on the dialect evidence of the C manuscripts, supported by references in the poem to his residence in London as a 'thing of the past', and the evidence of Richard the Redeless that Langland was in Bristol in 1399. (4) Modern scholarship has rejected both Skeat's autobiographical reading of the poem and his attribution of Richard the Redeless to Langland, leaving only the dialect evidence as support for Skeat's theory concerning Langland's biography. In spite of this Samuels's discussion of the dialect evidence of the C manuscripts, and the support it appears to lend to Skeat's argument, have been influential in subsequent scholarship. For instance S. S. Hussey has likened Langland's return to Malvern to Shakespeare's return to Stratford, equating this move with a return to a 'simpler society, to a C-text where the tearing of the Pardon might have seemed unnecessarily dramatic (and so was omitted), where constant self-justification was no longer so necessary, and where the poet is an outsider no more'. (5) The view that Langland returned to Malvern has since become widespread and has been reproduced in authoritative accounts of Langland's life. For instance James Simpson writes: 'It seems probable, from the dialectal evidence of the C manuscripts, that [Langland] moved back to Malvern in later life.' (6) In his account of Langland's life Ralph Hanna has written: 'The dialectally localizable C manuscripts cluster geographically to a degree unparalleled by the manuscripts of the other versions ... On this evidence the C version appears to have been disseminated from south-western Worcestershire, perhaps specifically the Malvern area ... Such localizations of the scribes' origins support the theory that Langland returned late in life to Malvern, and that the C Version was distributed at an early date from that provincial centre, perhaps by another individual who took over the poet's papers.' (7) More recently Derek Pearsall has also drawn on such evidence to support his view that Langland left London before beginning the C version: 'it is now well established that, whereas manuscripts of A and B come from a wide range of dialect areas, including London, nearly all manuscripts of C derive from the southwest Midlands, in fact from an area close to the Malverns.' (8)

The dialect evidence marshalled by Samuels influences out understanding not just of Langland's life but also of the production and dissemination of the C version. For instance Hanna draws on this evidence further to make the suggestion that Langland's presence in the south-west Midlands while producing the C version might explain the reason for the large number of corruptions from the B archetype which he allowed to remain in the C revision, and the number of such corruptions he altered without simply restoring the B reading. Hanna writes: 'Given the evidence provided by manuscript provenance, the poet may have been physically separated from his B holograph (and thus forced to revise from scribal copy) in Worcestershire, not London, where he may even have given up his original to facilitate the production of copies of the B version.' (9) Samuels's evidence is also drawn upon by the editors of the Athlone edition of C, Russell and Kane. In their classification of the C manuscripts Russell and Kane identify a number of random groups in the C tradition which they attribute to coincident variation and memorial contamination. However they also note that other patterns of agreement across genetic groups point to the existence of correction, something which was not identified in the manuscript traditions of A and B. Russell and Kane argue that the different conditions surrounding the production and dissemination of C may explain this situation. In their view the C text was left incomplete by Langland, and further revisions were made by a 'literary executor' or 'editor', and 'there is the indication of the language of a majority of C manuscripts that they were produced in a relatively small region. So it will have been easy for a copyist in the early stages of the C tradition to have copied the poem more than once, and to be aware of divergencies of readings. This was, moreover, the poet's "own country", not far from his birthplace. So it is not hard to conceive of a special interest, even excitement, as an element in the multiplication of copies of C, out of which consultation would naturally result.' (10)

The negative evidence that Samuels provides concerning the production of copies of C in London is also significant for our understanding of the poem's audience. As A. I. Doyle has commented: 'Unless rather more copies of simple C can be demonstrated to be by scribes operating predominantly in London and its vicinity, we may be forced to conclude that the poem was little known in that form there, but mainly in the southern West and Central Midlands.' (11) It would seem from this distribution that the C version was either unknown, or at least not in much demand, in London at the turn of the century.

However such evidence is contradicted by other types of evidence concerning the circulation of the C version, which suggest an early circulation of the poem in this form in London. For instance, Wendy Scase has argued that variant versions of two C passages, preserved in the Ilchester manuscript and San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 114, represent an early authorial draft of these lines added in C. (12) Both of these manuscripts have secure London pedigrees: Ilchester was copied by the prolific Scribe D (see below) and the scribe of HM 114 was responsible for sections of the City of London Record Office, Letterbook I and portions of the Liber Albus, as well as two other manuscripts containing Middle English texts. (13) Whether Scase's identification of these variant texts as early authorial versions is accepted or not, their survival in two manuscripts which can be securely associated with London suggests a close connection between the C version and the capital. (14) If the argument for the authority of these versions is accepted then their appearance in London manuscripts suggests an early dissemination of at least parts of this version in London. Lawrence Warner's recent proposition that the London group of B manuscripts shows contamination from the C tradition provides further textual evidence for the early dissemination of C materials in London, (15) while Anne Middleton's argument that Langland derived his knowledge of the promulgation of the 1388 Statute of Labourers from 'metropolitan circles and circumstances' leads her to suggest that the poet was in London in the late 13808. (16)