The "Z Version" of Piers Plowman

Abstract

was the sigil assigned by Skeat to the Piers Plowman content of Bodleian Library MS Bodley 851 (SC 3041). Z edited by A. G. Rigg and Charlotte Brewer' is the text on fols. 124r-139r of that manuscript. It consists of prologue and eight sections or passus, copied in single hand and ending at VIII 92 (A VIII 88). A new hand, unmistakably of the fifteenth century, copied the remainder of Passus VIII on fols. 139r-140v and then continued with the last thirteen passus of the C version. Rigg and Brewer are uncertain whether the conclusion of Passus VIII should be regarded as part of the text but have printed the lines so that the reader may judge for himself (p. 30). Editors of Piers Plowman have hitherto considered the text to be of scribal origin. It is closer in form and content to the A text than to B or C, but the degree of its correspondence to the archetypal A text varies considerably. text differs extremely throughout the Prologue, in the latter part of Passus III, and throughout Passus V. As whole, the text lacks more than 300 lines found in the A text and has more than 200 lines peculiar to itself. At some points it reads lines or passages found in the A tradition in different sequence. It also contains readings and lines from B, BC, and C. Three of its divisions of passus differ from those of A, B, and C. Rigg and Brewer propose that the version is authorial and antedates the A version, is in effect an Ur-text of Piers Plowman, a copy of version written before the A-text (foreword). The evidence suggests that was still in draft form or represents partial revision of the earliest version of the poem (p. 13); Z is (in restored form) Langland's partial revision of his first draft of the poem (p. 19 and cp. p. 33). editors present their case in the form of an elaborate edition. They call their argument hypothesis, the best that is, one supposes, the likeliest explanation of number of circumstances which they specify: the early date of the manuscript, the language of the text, and the literary quality of its distinctive content, as well as the integrity of the text as form of Piers Plowman seen both absolutely and in relation to the A and B versions. What they put forward is actually not hypothesis in any strict sense, but an assemblage of arguments, linked by iterative assertion, in