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Unit 1: Development of Prose Writing through the Literary Ages

to be regarded as accidental. It was a fixed rule in this strict system of scansion that the first Notes
metrically stressed syllable of the second half-line must bear the alliteration and thus serve as a
kind of key-word to the alliterative scheme of the line as a whole.
Many lines will be found in Langland which satisfy the demands of the strict system of Old
English alliterative verse. The following, for example, are as regular as any written in the Old
English period :
“And also Job the gentel what Joye hadde he on erthe,
How bittere he hit bouhte as the book telleth !”
Such lines are not uncommon in the poem, but the poet usually preserves the general rhythm of
the style without paying much attention to the strict rules of Old English scansion. Sometimes the
alliteration is altogether lacking, sometimes it falls on words so lightly stressed that they fail to
take their place in the metrical structure of the line. Frequently the two half-lines contain separate
and independent alliterating sounds. Many half-lines are found which can be read only with three
and sometimes more heavy stresses, and the unstressed syllables are frequently so numerous and
so disposed as to destroy altogether the feeling for the few type patterns of scansion characteristic
of regular alliterative verse. The result of these various irregularities is to produce a line which
often is without strict metrical structure, and when several of these lines come together the effect
is not distinguishable from prose with a sprinkling of alliteration. It is true that the swing of the
lines in Piers Plowman usually carries the reader over these unmetrical passages without a violent
sense of interruption. But it is apparent that in the hands of a more careless versifier than Langland
the meter would suffer still more and the distinction between prose and verse become completely
effaced. As it is, often a slightly unusual order of words is all that distinguishes Langland’s verse
rhythm from prose rhythm.
The free alliterative line, as treated by Langland, is admirably suited to his somewhat rambling,
often turgid and colloquial subject-matter. The style is not that of the scholar or the refined artist.
Langland probably never submitted himself to the severe discipline in versification which Chaucer’s
early experiments in ballades and complaints illustrate. Discipline was not necessary to write the
kind of verse he was trying to write. The main requisites were a feeling for rhythm, a vocabulary
extensive enough to provide alliterating words, and, finally, volubility of expression.
Perhaps this last is the most persistent and striking characteristic of Langland’s style, a characteristic
which again connects him with the popular feeling for prose expression. Although many lines of
admirable compression occur, they are usually proverbial in tone, or are short summaries of moral
wisdom. The poem is not infrequently powerful, but it attains its effects by a tumultuous heaping
of details rather than by the carefully weighed style of a classic artist, like Chaucer, who uses
every word with a sense of its fullest effect and meaning. His own moral earnestness and the
unfailing gift of a concrete and highly poetic imagination are all that save Langland from falling
into rant and bombast. This quality of improvisation in the poem appears throughout in the
selection of detail. Everything that came into the author’s mind is included, the coarsest pictures
of popular life standing side by side with poetical and profoundly spiritual allegorical imagery.
Personal allusions abound, to Wat and to Tom Stowe, to Bet and to Beton the brewster, to Hick the
hackneyman, and to dozens of others, who may or may not stand for real persons of Langland’s
acquaintance, but who are effectively real in the poem. Frequent references to places in London, to
Cornhill, Westminster, Shoreditch, Southwark, Tyburn, and others, also often lend an air of easy
familiarity to the narrative. The speech, even of very dignified characters, is often colored with the
colloquialism of conversation. Truth responds to Mercy when the latter expounds the plan of the
resurrection, that her story is “bote a tale of Walterot,” a piece of nonsense. And the version of the
sentiment, Deniem pro dente, et oculum pro oculo, which is put into the mouth of the Lord himself,
picturesquely declares that whoso hitteth out a man’s eye or else his front teeth or maimeth or
hurteth any other limb, he shall suffer the same sore.

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