Getty 10v
The First Master and the three figures under him. This is the page the rest of the book keeps pointing at: its third figure, [Dagger 19], is the middle lock, and later plays cite it not by name but by position — "the third play of the First Master" — which counts out exactly on this folio ([17] first, [18] second, [19] third).
I am the First Master and I am called Remedy (rimedio), because "remedy" means knowing how to remedy so that you are not struck, and so that you can strike and wound your adversary. By this [cover], than which none better can be made, I will make your dagger go to the ground, turning my hand to the left side.
- A definition first, and it is the book's most load-bearing: "remedy" means knowing how to remedy so that you are not struck, and so that you can strike and wound your adversary. Both halves in one word — this is cover-and-strike, named (Tactical grouping §2). A remedy that only saves you is not a remedy.
- The attack is never stated. The Getty names no line and no grip — only the answer to it.
- Make the cover, which the Getty rates absolutely: none better can be made.
- Turn your hand to the left side.
- That turn sends his dagger to the ground. The disarm is the turn, not a second action after it.
- Everything downstream — the scholars, the locks, the takings — hangs off this cover.
The Getty's Master disarms by the hand-turn. The Pisani Dossi's takes the dagger with the left hand, and the Paris agrees with the Pisani Dossi — see the comparison.
With my dagger I will make a turn (volta) around your arm. And by this counter you will not have taken the dagger from me. And also, with this turn that I make, without doubt I will plant it in your chest.
- You are the player, and the First Master has just covered you ([Dagger 17]).
- Wind your dagger in a turn (volta) around his arm — do not try to pull it straight back out.
- Two results from the one turn: he does not get the dagger — the turn frees it from his cover —
- and the point lands in his chest.
- One action, both jobs: the same economy the Master claimed for himself on the plate before.
The best cover in the book is answered on the very next figure. Fiore does not let it stand for a page.
In the middle lock (mezana ligadura) I have shut your arm in such a way that you cannot cause me any trouble. And if I want to dash you to the ground, it is little bother to me; and do not weary yourself trying to escape me.
- His arm is shut in the middle lock (mezana ligadura). The verse says how the arms lie: his right arm under your left.
- Held there, he can do you no trouble at all — the lock is a position of safety as much as of threat.
- If you want to throw him, it is "little bother" (pocha briga) from here.
- And he should not tire himself trying to get out.
- No entry is described. The Getty does not say how you arrive in the lock, only that you are in it and what it is worth.
The reference plate of the whole book. Three later dagger Masters route into it by citing this figure's position — "the middle lock, that is, the third play of the First King and Remedy" ([Dagger 75], [Dagger 82], [Dagger 90]) — and the longsword's close play imports it whole ([S2H 64]). Note what that means: the book's fixed address for its most-cited lock is a place on a page.
I will make the counter of the play that is before me — you can see into what plight I have put him: I will break his arm, or swiftly dash him to the ground.
- You are the man in the middle lock ([Dagger 19]).
- The Getty describes no mechanism. It says only that the plight is now his — "you can see into what plight I have put him".
- Break his arm, or
- dash him to the ground, quickly.
- The verse witnesses give the mechanism the prose withholds: the counter enters the lower key (chiave de soto). See the comparison.
Two figures after the middle lock is fixed as the book's reference, the book breaks it.
The versions diverge on the counter's finish: the Getty promises a break or a throw, while the Pisani Dossi and Paris have the counter enter the lower key. Here and in several later plays the verse couplets are matched to the plates and often describe the action differently than the Getty prose.
Glossological analysis
- rimedio ([17]) — remedy, and the Getty defines it here rather than assuming it: to remedy is both not to be struck and to be able to strike. Not "cure", and not merely "defense". The entire Remedy-Master apparatus of the book rests on this one sentence, and no verse witness carries it.
- mezana ligadura / chiave meçana ([19], [21]) — the middle lock, also the middle key. Fixed at the third figure of the First Master and cited from across the book by that position ([Dagger 75], [Dagger 82], [Dagger 90], [S2H 64]).
- chiave de soto (PD, [20]) — the lower key, i.e. the lower lock (ligadura di sotto), fixed later as the strong key at [Dagger 54]. The verse names it here; the Getty does not.
- volta ([17], [18]) — a turn. At [17] it is the Master's hand turning to the left; at [18] it is the player's dagger winding round the Master's arm. The same word does both jobs on one page — volta is Fiore's general name for the rotation that makes a technique work ([S2H 1]).
- pocha briga ([19]) — "little trouble", not "brigade". Fiore's stock idiom for this costs me nothing; the grappling section uses the same family ([Grappling 13]), and it recurs at [Dagger 50], [Dagger 51], [Dagger 104].
- impazo ([19]) — trouble, hindrance: "non mi poi fare alchun impazo", you can do me no hindrance. Not "impasse". The section's standard word for what a lock prevents ([Dagger 53], [Dagger 56], [Dagger 105]).
- ingano (PD, [17]) — deceit, trickery — and praised, not censured: the First Master is "full of deceit" and his scholars work by guile (falsitade). The verse family's Masters boast of cunning where the Getty's boast of method.
- partido ([20]) — "into what plight (a qual partido) I have put him". Not the grappling section's partido = a set piece ([Grappling 14], [Grappling 16]). Here it is a state or condition — the fix a man is in. Same word, unrelated sense, one section apart.
Manuscript comparison
- A real divergence at [17]: how the dagger is taken. The Getty's First Master disarms by turning his hand to the left side, and never mentions his left hand. The Pisani Dossi says "cum man stancha torote la daga de mano" — with my left hand I will take the dagger from your hand — and the Paris agrees ("manu leva pretento tollere dagam"). Prose: a hand-turn that drops the dagger on the ground. Verse: a left-hand seizure. Same plate, different disarm — and the prose's whole definition of rimedio, the most cited sentence in the book, has no verse counterpart at all.
- A real divergence at [20]: how the counter finishes. The Getty promises a break or a throw. Both verse witnesses instead put the counter into the lower key — Pisani Dossi "In la chiave de soto tal presa ti fara impaço", Paris "Inferiore tum clave pressura nocebit." Flagged at the Note to [20] in Dagger translation, with the general observation that the couplets are matched to the plates and often describe a different action from the prose.
- The verse names the locks; the prose names the outcomes. That is this folio's pattern and it runs straight on into 11r: at [20] the verse has the lower key where the Getty has a break, and at [Dagger 21] the verse has the middle key where the Getty says only "I could well lock you". It runs opposite to the usual division — here the verse carries the technical vocabulary, exactly as it does in the grappling section at [Grappling 7].
- The Paris does not keep these four together. [17] and [18] sit at Paris 21v; [19] and [20] jump to 24r. Across the First Master the Paris's dagger sigla run from 21r to 44r without tracking the Getty at all — its plays are concorded to the Getty by content, not by position (the extreme case is at 11v below).
- Illustrations. All four are the Pisani Dossi's (06a-e, 06a-f, 06b-a, 06b-b); the Getty's own 10v plates are not the ones shown. So the figures here depict the verse family's rendering of the First Master — including, at [17], the left-hand disarm the Getty's text does not describe.
- Coverage. Getty, Pisani Dossi, Paris all four. Morgan none.