ABSTRACT
Piers Plowman, if the emphasis of modern scholarship and criticism is to be believed, offers few problems which are easy of solution. It is, then, surprising that, with minimal dissent, the division of surviving manuscripts into groups testifying to three identifiable versions of the poem has been so easily accepted. The earlier part of the manuscript is found to offer a text which is markedly different from that offered by any other manuscript of the A, B or C tradition. Similarly anyone who will write about the phenomenon of revision in the poem must make an assumption about the authorship of the successive revisions. In the process of revision, there will be real danger of major misunderstandings since the revisers will not necessarily have any more authoritative access to the poem under revision than will any other reader.
