Really the only difficult thing about Piers Plowman is finding a good translation that is readable and hasn’t lost the original context.
I recommend that anyone trying to read it, go out and find following version:
ISBN: 9780393960112
Title: Piers Plowman: An Alliterative Verse Translation
Author: William Langland
Translator: E. Talbot Donaldson
Edited & Annotated: Elizabeth D. Kirk & Judith H. Anderson
I spent a lot of time looking through options for reading Piers Plowman, and this version is highly readable, annotated extremely well, and doesn’t seem to mess up any of the context.
Sidenote: The translator also has a pretty good Beowulf Translation, which I have also picked up and started reading.
It’s so much fun—great example of medieval allegory! When I worked at the William Blake Archive in grad school, we collaborated a lot with the Piers Plowman Project. I loved the book, and there’s a fascinating manuscript history with PP.