Getty 36r
Two more guards, matched against each other as [3] and [4] were — and carried by the Getty alone, with the result that the axe has six guards in the prose and four in the verse.
I am the Long Tail (coda longa); against the Window Guard (posta de fenestra) I mean to work. At any time I can strike, and with my descending blow I would beat every axe and sword to the ground, and at the close play (zogo stretto) I would make myself strong. As for the plays you will find hereafter — look at them one by one, I pray you.
- Stand in the Long Tail — the axe carried back and low — and name your opponent: the Window Guard ([Axe 6]).
- The claim on tempo: "at any time I can strike" (de tutto tempo posso ferire) — no wait, no preparation.
- The claim on the blow: the descending blow would beat every axe and sword to the ground.
- The claim on measure: at the close play (zogo stretto) it would make itself strong.
- Then Fiore breaks frame and addresses the reader directly: look at the plays that follow "one by one, I pray you".
Claim 3 is not a boast in the air — beating the companion's axe to the ground is precisely the condition [Axe 7] sets for doing any of the plays at all. The guard is pointing at the next page.
I am called the Window Guard (posta de fenestra) on the left; with a small movement of the arm I become [the same guard] on the right. We two have no stability: the one and the other seek falseness (falsita). You will believe that I come with the descending blow, but I will draw a foot back and change guard; where I was on the left, I will enter on the right. And I believe I can enter very quickly into the plays that come hereafter.
- Stand in the Window Guard on the left.
- A small movement of the arm makes it the same guard on the right: the two sides are one guard, and the change is cheap.
- Fiore's classification, spoken by the guard rather than labelled above it: "we two have no stability".
- Both sides "seek falseness" (falsita) — the guard's business is deception.
- The deception, concretely: he will believe you are coming with the descending blow;
- instead, draw a foot back and change guard — left becomes right;
- and enter the following plays from the new side.
The only guard in the axe section whose stated purpose is to lie. Note where the feint lives: not in the axe but in the foot — the threat is abandoned by withdrawing, and re-made on the other side.
Glossological analysis
- coda longa ([5]) — the Long Tail, the weapon carried back and low behind the body; a longsword guard reused unchanged ([S2H 23], where it is classed stabile).
- posta de fenestra ([5], [6]) — the Window Guard (the casement window), likewise a longsword guard ([S2H 15]) — and, as there, an unstable one.
- de tutto tempo ([5]) — "at any time": the guard is never out of position to strike. Tempo in Fiore's sense of an actionable moment, not clock-time.
- zogo stretto ([5]) — the close play, the near-measure game; the term is borrowed from the longsword ([S2H 48] onward) and applied to the axe without redefinition.
- stabilita / falsita ([6]) — stability / falseness. The pair is the guard's self-classification: having no stability, it deals in deception. This is the instabile class of the longsword headings, spoken aloud instead of labelled.
- mudero di posta ([6]) — "I will change guard": changing posta is itself an action, with a tempo, made here by drawing a foot back.
Manuscript comparison
- The Getty alone has these two guards. Neither the Pisani Dossi nor the Paris carries [5] or [6]: their axe opens with four figures (PD 27a-a…d — the guards of 35v) and goes straight to the plays at 27b. The axe therefore has six guards in the prose and four in the verse.
- The two the verse lacks are the two that are not boasts. [1]–[4] are pure couplet material: a name and a claim, two lines each. [5] and [6] are neither — [5] ends by addressing the reader ("look at them one by one, I pray you"), and [6] spends four clauses explaining a feint. There is nothing in either that compresses into a couplet, and the verse witnesses do not try. The loss is not random: it falls on the plates that instruct.
- A classification spoken rather than labelled. In the longsword the Window Guard is marked instabile in the Getty's own play heading ([S2H 15]). Here the guard simply says it — "we two have no stability" — inside its speech. Same content, no apparatus.
- Illustrations. Both plates are Getty figures (36r-a, 36r-b), necessarily: no other witness depicts them.