Getty 19r
The fencing half of the section, complete in one page: the dagger Master's guard and the three plates that flow from it. The page is unusual in its third plate, which is not a play of the Master's at all but the defense the player should have made — the answer sits in the middle of the family rather than at its end.
Here begins the play of sword and dagger (spada e daga). The advantage is great to whoever knows how to do it. The Master waits in this guard, and the guard is called the Boar's Tooth (dente di zenghiaro). Let cuts and thrusts come, for I know how to guard myself against them. Beating [the attack] aside (rebatter), I will make the right foot return backward. The close play (zogo stretto) I know by heart, and I cannot fail in it. Let whoever wants to go against me come one at a time: for if he does not flee from me, I will ruin him in a single turn.
- Take the Boar's Tooth (dente di zenghiaro) with the dagger and wait — this Master does not initiate.
- Let cuts and thrusts come; the guard answers both.
- Beat the incoming sword aside (rebatter) — and in that same action make the right foot return backward. Beat and step are one thing, and the step goes back, not forward.
- Those two together are "a single turn" (in un voltare), and the turn is the whole play: from it, go straight to the close play (zogo stretto).
- The standing proviso: they come one at a time. Against a sword, the dagger has no answer to two men.
The Master's own claim is not that he will win the exchange but that he knows the close play "by heart and cannot fail in it" — the dagger's advantage is not in the beat, it is in what the beat buys.
My Master makes such a cover against the thrust, and immediately strikes to the face or to the chest. And with dagger against sword he always wants the close play (zogo stretto). Here I am at the close, and I can strike you well: willing or not, you must suffer it.
- Your Master has made the cover against the thrust from the Boar's Tooth ([Dagger-Sword 1]).
- Off that cover, strike immediately — to the face or to the chest.
- You are now at the close: from here, the text's claim is that he must suffer it, willing or not.
The scholar states the section's governing rule in passing: "with dagger against sword he always wants the close play." Not a preference — the short weapon has no game at any other distance.
If the player who is in front of me had known how to make such a defense — if he had placed his left hand on the scholar in this way, behind his elbow, turning him in the manner that is shown here — I would not have needed to make the counter (contrario) of the Master who stands in guard (posta) with the dagger.
- This plate is not a play but the defense the player failed to make — the Getty states it retrospectively, in the conditional.
- Had the player set his left hand on the scholar behind the elbow,
- and turned him by it,
- then — the speaker says — the counter of the Master who stands in guard with the dagger would not have been needed.
- The reasoning is the point: the elbow-turn does the work the formal counter would have done, so the counter becomes unnecessary rather than unavailable.
Who is speaking in the Getty is a known crux; the verse witnesses do not hedge at all, giving the plate as the swordsman's accomplished victory. See the comparison below and Dagger vs Sword translation.
The versions frame this differently: the Getty speaks retrospectively (the defense the player should have made — a hand behind the elbow, turning), while the Pisani Dossi and Paris state it directly as the swordsman's accomplished victory, having turned the dagger-man away. Who is speaking in the Getty is a known crux.
If a descending blow (fendente) of the sword comes thrown at the head of the Master who stands in guard with the dagger, he passes forward and makes this cover quickly, and turns him by pushing the elbow — and then he can well strike him immediately. Also, he can bind the sword together with his arm in the way that the fourth play of the sword in one hand knows how to do [Sword in One Hand 9]. And also in the dagger, at the third play [Dagger 19], you will find that middle lock (ligadura mezana) which is held closed a span from the face.
- The swordsman throws a descending blow (fendente) at the dagger Master's head.
- The Master passes forward — into the blow, not away from it.
- He makes this cover, and makes it quickly: the whole defense depends on arriving before the cut does.
- He turns him by pushing the elbow — the same elbow-turn the player should have used against the scholar at [Dagger-Sword 3], now in the Master's hand.
- From the turn he can strike at once. The Getty leaves the target unstated; the verse fills it in — the back (Pisani Dossi), the kidneys (Paris).
- Or, instead of striking: bind the sword together with his arm, the way [Sword1H 9] does it.
- Or: the middle lock (ligadura mezana) of [Dagger 19], held shut a hand's span from the face.
Three cross-references in one plate, two of them to other sections. The dagger Master's cover is not a dagger technique — it is an entry into the book's common close-play vocabulary.
Fiore's internal cross-references count plays by their order after each Remedy Master on the page: the "fourth play of the sword in one hand" is the imprisonment of sword and arm at Getty 20v-d [Sword in One Hand 9], and the "third play of the dagger" is the middle lock of the First Remedy Master at Getty 10v-c [Dagger 19]. The "sub(?)" in the Paris transcription marks an uncertain reading.
Glossological analysis
- spada e daga ([1]) — literally "sword and dagger", but the matchup is dagger against sword, not the two weapons paired in one man's hands. Fiore names the game by both weapons; the "great advantage" he promises belongs to the dagger.
- dente di zenghiaro ([1]) — the Boar's Tooth: the low awaiting guard that answers with a rising action, named for the tusk. The same name is a grappling guard ([Grappling 3]), two of the twelve longsword guards ([S2H 20], [S2H 25]), and the swordsman's own choice when he awaits three spearmen ([Sword-Spear 1]). It is what the shorter weapon stands in to await the longer, whatever is in the hand.
- rebatter ([1]) — to beat aside. Note what it is coupled to here: not a pass forward but the right foot returning backward. The dagger beats and withdraws, where the sword beats and enters ([S2H 3]).
- zogo stretto ([1], [2]) — the close play. In the longsword it is one of two states, entered according to where the swords cross ([S2H 48]); with dagger against sword it is not a choice at all — "he always wants the close play."
- voltare / volta ([1], [3], [4]) — the turn, and the word carries the whole page: the Master ruins his man "in a single turn" (in un voltare), the player's defense turns the scholar, the Master's cover turns the player by the elbow.
- contrario ([3]) — counter: the third term of Fiore's basic unit (Glossary). Here it appears by its absence — the play explains why the counter would not have been needed.
- posta ([3]) — guard, in its plain technical sense ("the Master who stands in guard with the dagger"). Contrast the idiom a tua posta on the next folio, where the same word means "at your pleasure".
- fendente ([4]) — the descending blow, the sword's committed downward cut; the attack the dagger Master answers by passing forward into it.
- ligadura mezana ([4]) — the middle lock, fixed once at [Dagger 19] and cited from all over the book. The Getty's memorable detail is dimensional: it is held closed a span (a una spana) from the face — a hand's span, thumb to little finger.
Manuscript comparison
- The Morgan re-enters the book here. This is the first section in which the Morgan has any text at all: it carries no grappling, no dagger, no baton (Manuscript comparison §4C), and picks up at 18r-d with [1]. Its readings for [1]–[4] are "substantially identical" to the Getty in the usual near-verbatim prose-family relation (§6), with one addition worth noting: at [1] it says the Master waits in this guard with the dagger (cum la daga), a fact the Getty leaves to the picture.
- The Pisani Dossi marks rank by line-count. [1] and [4] — the two plates that speak for the Master — get four lines; [2] and [3], the scholar's strike and the player's defense, get two. The same holds across the rest of the section (quatrains at [6] and [8], the wager-Masters; couplets at [7] and [10], their scholars). The verse witness encodes the pedagogical hierarchy typographically, where the prose states it in words.
- A real divergence of frame at [3]. The Getty speaks in the conditional and in retrospect — this is the defense the player should have made, and had he made it, no counter would have been called for. The Pisani Dossi and Paris state the plate flatly as an accomplished fact from the swordsman's side: "here the sword has beaten the dagger, because I have turned you and pushed you"; "the dagger availed you nothing — so quickly have I forced your back to turn". Same picture, opposite grammar: a missed opportunity in the prose, a victory in the verse.
- Paris expands and specifies at [4]. The Latin runs to four lines against the Pisani Dossi's four and the Getty's prose, and adds a target neither Italian witness names: the dagger goes into the kidneys (renes). It also carries an uncertain reading — the transcription's sub(?) — at the point where the sword is cast at the head.
- Illustrations. All four plates are reproduced from the Pisani Dossi (35a-a…d); none of the Getty's own 19r figures are shown. The reader of this page is looking at the verse witness's rendering of the prose witness's text.
- Coverage. Getty, Morgan, and Pisani Dossi carry all four plates; the Paris has [2], [3], and [4] but not the Master at [1] — the Latin joins the section one plate late, and so never states the guard.