Cr1.3.33KD.3.32 Shal no lewdnes lette the clerke that I loue
C.3.32KD.3.32 Schal no lewednesse · lette þe leode þat I louye
R.3.32KD.3.32
Schal no lewednesse lette þe clerkesR.3.32:
Although alpha's third stave shows defective alliteration (cf. beta's leode, which is also the reading of Ax), alpha's clerkes is supported by Cr and universally by the C version. The
possibility that alpha and C have randomly converged in error here, both
chancing upon the same word that neither alliterates in its line nor is an equivalent for the
word replaced, seems unlikely—especially since this particular pattern of alpha / C agreement in editorial change is one that recurs frequently throughout
the developing narrative.
Only two explanations seem plausible for this array of
variants and for many similar ones; however, at this distance the two explanations are almost
indistinguishable: (1) While he was working on B, Langland began to be
much more concerned about his London readers not understanding obsolescent words like leode than about small metrical lapses and therefore entered a series of
marginal "updatings" into Bx's exemplar, moving it away, at times
awkwardly, from original A readings in order to meet his changed
perception of audience needs. When confronted with such evidence of authorial ambiguity in
his exemplar, the scribe of Bx usually hedged his bets by copying the
text unaltered, with the authorial change reproduced in his own margin (perhaps thinking it a
gloss). In the final stage of this process, alpha and beta followed their respective
proclivities, with alpha normally taking such an entry as authorial revision and using it to
supplant the original text while beta usually took it as a mere gloss, ignored it, and copied
what he saw in the body of the line of Bx. Or, (2) like its many
anomalous relatives in other "revised" lines, clerke(s) was indeed a
purely scribal gloss in the immediate ancestor of Bx and had no warrant
from the author, but still seemed sufficiently ambiguous to the Bx
scribe to deserve exact reproduction. The roles of alpha and beta in this scenario remain the
same as in the first. But what is painfully evident is that, by the time he began using the
exemplar of Bx to create the C text, Langland
either didn't care anymore about such small aesthetic matters or had completely forgotten who
had authored clerkes—or both! þat I louye .
F.4.33KD.3.32Shal no lewidnesse lettyn / þo clerkysF.4.33: Alpha is responsible for clerkys. Beta manuscripts have leode. þat y lovye.