ABSTRACT
Piers Plowman has the reputation of being a difficult poem. In the first place it exists not in one version but in three, conventionally called A, B and C, which seem to represent progressive revisions on the part of the author. For the comparative beginner in Piers Plowman, however, there exists another kind of difficulty which may properly be considered in an introduction. The poem has been read and quoted in every century since its composition; the sixteenth-century Protestants, for example, professed to see support for their teachings in its ecclesiastical satire, and it was one of them, Robert Crowley, who first printed the poem. As Professor George Kane has pointed out, the content of Piers Plowman was interesting enough and of sufficient contemporary relevance to persuade the scribes of their ability to improve on the original. In the case of Piers Plowman, all manuscripts are corrupt to some extent.
