Beneath the surface of the debate form, the content is primarily that of a medieval satire, meditating on statecraft and attacking state institutions that oppress and exploit the poor.
871–1287), where the idealised Sothsegger king is presented as a beekeeper, exterminating unproductive drones who are intent on stealing the honey created by the other worker bees.
Due to some similarities with Piers Plowman, it was suggested in the 19th century by W. W. Skeat that William Langland wrote the piece, but this theory is no longer accepted by the academic community.
Indeed, John Bale (1495–1563), an important early antiquarian, wrongly identified the poem Skeat named Richard the Redeless as "Mum, Soth-segger".
[3] This link between the two poems continued to the early 20th century, with Day and Steele declaring in their EETS edition that "the two fragments form part of one larger composition.