¹ "The perfunctory waking interlude serves as a mere bridge-passage from the first vision to the second, which continues the theme of the first (political and social) on an individual (moral) plane" (Schmidt 270).

² The narrator again invokes the same setting of a "feld ful of folk" from the Prologue. This repeation of the phrase is significant as the introduction to the second vision.

³ "Reason: the process, considered by medieval thinkers to be the unique and distinctive capacity of human beings, as opposed to animals, of reaching truth by discursive logic or rational argument (Donaldson 257).

⁴ "A storm on January 15, 1362, severe enough for mention in several chronicles. `Pestilences': since 1349, England had suffered a number of epidemics of the plague" (Donaldson 39).

⁵ Women were punished for being shrewish wives, dishonest tradesmen, etc., by being plunged in water on a "ducking stool"; presumably Tom is to fetch his wife home and beat her (with "two sticks") himself instead of relying on the community to discipline her. "Tom Stowe: the name, like those in the next few lines, is a generic one, comparable to the modern "John Smith" (Donaldson 40).