Langland, or LANGLEY, WILLIAM, the supposed name of the author of Piers the Plowman, of whose life some few facts have been constructed from the internal evidence offered by the poem, mainly by the industry of Professor Skeat. He was born a franklin or freeman's son about 1332, probably at Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire; went to school, possibly in the monastery at Great Malvern; became a clerk, but, having married early, could not take more than minor orders, and earned a poor living by singing the placebo, dirige, and 'seven psalms' for men's souls, and by copying legal documents. He lived many years in London, was named 'Long Will' from his stature, and prolonged poverty seems to have made him embittered and somewhat churlish in disposition. The last trace of him is in his poem of Richard the Redeles (850 lines), from which we learn that he was at Bristol in 1399.
The full title of his famous poem is The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, together with Vita de Do-wel, Do-bet, et Do-best secundum Wit et Resoun. It exists in three different forms or recensions, distinguished by Professor Skeat as the A, B, and C texts. Of these the first was composed about 1362, and contains only 2567 lines. In it the Vision of Piers the Plowman is quite distinct from the Vision of Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-best, the former consisting of a prologue and 8 passus (1833 lines), and the latter of a prologue and 3 passus (734 lines). The B text, the form of the poem which best represents the genius of the poet, was written after 1377, and contains about 7100 lines, consisting of the two Visions as before, the former arranged in a prologue and 7 passus, the latter in 3 prologues and 10 passus. The first part of the B text, giving the Vision of the Field full of Folk, of Holy Church, and of Lady Meed, next the Vision of the Seven Deadly Sins and of Piers the Plowman, was admirably edited by Professor Skeat as a school-book in the Clarendon Press series (1869). The C text was probably not composed till 1390. It adds about 250 lines to the poem, and is arranged, without prologues, continuously in 23 passus.
This long poem has great defects as a work of art, but the moral earnestness and energy of the author sometimes glow into really noble poetry, particularly in his invectives against injustice and wrong, the idleness and pride of the clergy, and especially the dissolute habits of the mendicant friars. The theological discussions are not seldom tedious, but are brightened by vivid glimpses of the life of the poorer classes in his day, and some of the allegorical representations, as of the Glutton and Sloth, have something of the reality of life. The conception of the Plowman grows as the poem proceeds, and from a mere honest labourer he passes into a personification of the reforming spirit, and at one moment becomes identified with Christ himself. The writer is no precursor of Lollardism on its speculative side, or specially a Reformer other than in his revolt from the slavish hypocrisy of form apart from the inward power of religion, and his longing for a return to simple scripture truth without sacerdotal domination.
The metre of the poem is alliterative, but irregular. The dialect is mixed, but mainly Midland, with occasional introduction of Southern forms, and the vocabulary is of unusual extent.
The earlier editions of Robert Crowley (1505), Owen Rogers (1561), Dr Whitaker (the C text, 1813), and Thomas Wright (1842) were superseded by Professor Skeat's exhaustive and final edition for the Early English Text Society: Part I. (A text), 1867; Part II. (B text), 1869; Part III. (C text, with Richard the Redeles), 1873; Part IV., Notes, 1877; Glossary, &c., 1884. A more convenient edition of this was issued by the Clarendon Press in 1886 (2 vols.), the three parallel texts being printed together. See J. J. Jusserand, La Poésie Mystique de William Langland (1893).