Getty 11r
A scholar's cover offering three exits — disarm, lock, or a knee-grip throw — and the counter that refuses all three. Then two plates that exist only in the Getty, and both are the Getty talking about the edges of its own repertoire: one play it says has no counter, and one it says is hardly used.
[I am] in a good cover for taking the dagger from your hand. Also, by this grip I could well lock you. And if I put my right hand under your right knee, I would make you go to the ground, for this art I know well how to do.
- You are in a good cover, the position issuing from the First Master's remedy.
- First exit: from here, take the dagger from his hand.
- Second exit: the same grip will lock him. The verse names which lock — the middle key (chiave meçana), i.e. [Dagger 19]; the Getty says only "lock".
- Third exit: put your right hand under his right knee and he goes to the ground.
- All three come from one grip. The Getty does not rank them and does not say what chooses between them.
Three of [Dagger 8]'s five things from one position — take the dagger, lock, put him on the ground — which is [Dagger 8]'s "one does not abandon the other" working exactly as advertised.
I am about to make the counter of the play that is before me, so that you will not be able to throw me to the ground, nor take my dagger, nor yet lock me. But you must let go in spite of yourself, or my dagger will at once be driven into you.
- You are the man in the cover of [Dagger 21]; all three of its exits are aimed at you.
- The counter answers the whole set at once: no throw, no disarm, no lock.
- Its mechanism is not described. The Getty says only what it achieves.
- Its lever is a dilemma: let go, or take the dagger. He must release "in spite of himself" — the release is compelled, not chosen.
Written as a refutation item by item, against the previous plate's list. Fiore counters the enumeration rather than any one technique in it — [Dagger 44] will do the same thing to a list of four.
This is a play without any counter, and of necessity the player must go to the ground and lose the dagger. The scholar, as you see, can do to the player this that I say. And when he is on the ground, he will have other things yet to settle.
- The claim comes first: this play has no counter at all.
- Its outcome is compulsory, and it is double — the player must go to the ground and must lose the dagger. Not either/or.
- No grip and no step is described. The plate is an assertion attached to a picture, and you are told to look: "the scholar, as you see".
- A closing threat: on the ground he "will have other things yet to settle" — the throw is not the end of it.
One of the very few counter-proof plays in the book; compare [Grappling 12] and [Dagger 51], which make the same claim. All three are holds already closed, and none of the three describes itself.
This play is little used in the art of the dagger, but it is still a defense, and more knowledge: for the scholar, with such a beating-aside (rebattere) done in this way, makes the player — that is, his adversary — be struck in the thigh or in the belly.
- The caveat comes before the technique: this play is little used in the art of the dagger.
- Fiore's reason for including it anyway: it is still a defense, and more knowledge. The book is a repertoire, not a shortlist.
- The action: a beating-aside (rebattere) of the incoming dagger, done "in this way".
- The outcome is specific and strange: the beat makes the player be struck — in the thigh or in the belly, the lowest targets named anywhere in the section.
- The Getty does not say whose dagger arrives there. The natural reading is that the beat turns the player's own point into himself — the section elsewhere has exactly that outcome ("I will make you drive your own dagger into your thigh", [Dagger 64]) — but this text does not say so.
The one play that uses the beat the Full Iron Gate advertised at [Dagger 2], and the Getty's verdict on it is that it is hardly used. The same treatment the grappling section gives the leg-sweep ([Grappling 15]).
Glossological analysis
- chiave meçana (PD, [21], [22]) — the middle key, i.e. the middle lock of [Dagger 19]. The verse names it at both plates; the Getty says only "lock" at [21] and "lock me" at [22].
- rebattere ([24]) — to beat aside: striking the incoming dagger out of line. Advertised by the Full Iron Gate at [Dagger 2], used exactly once, and called "little used" when it is. The sword's term for the same act ([S2H 3]).
- lo suo contrario ([24]) — here "his adversary", not "his counter" — the same word that everywhere else in the section means the counter-play. The Getty glosses it in place ("the player — that is, his adversary"), which is the only reason the sense is recoverable. A live trap: contrario is the section's most technical term and its most ordinary one.
- zugadore / scolaro ([23], [24]) — player / scholar. This folio is where the section stops speaking as the figures and starts describing them in the third person.
- chossa / ventre ([24]) — the thigh and the belly. The only low targets in the section; everything in the dagger's blow-map stops at the elbow ([Dagger 9]).
- incassado ([22]) — "my dagger will at once be driven in" (sara incassado), literally boxed or cased into you. A blunt idiom, not a technical term.
Manuscript comparison
- Two Getty-only plates, and they are the two that talk about the repertoire. [23] and [24] have no verse in either witness — the Pisani Dossi jumps from 6b-d ([22]) to 6b-e ([31]), the Paris from 24v-d to 25r-a. What the verse family drops is precisely the Getty's two meta-plates: the play with no counter and the play that is little used. The couplets record techniques; they do not record the author's opinions of them.
- The verse keeps naming the lock the prose leaves generic. [21]: Getty "per tal presa te poria ben ligare" — by this grip I could well lock you. Pisani Dossi: "In la chiave meçana ti faro stentare"; Paris the same (mediana in clave). And [22] answers in the same words — Getty "nor yet lock me", verse "you will not make me suffer in the middle key". Twice on one page the verse supplies the level and the prose does not.
- The Pisani Dossi's [21] is a template it reuses. "Si questo braço ti posso voltare / In la chiave meçana ti faro stentare" returns almost verbatim at [Dagger 76] — "Si questo brazo tuo posso voltare / in la sotana chiave te faro intrare" — with only the key changed, middle for lower. The verse family builds its plays out of interchangeable lines.
- Illustrations, split by survival. [21] and [22] are the Pisani Dossi's (06b-c, 06b-d); [23] and [24] are the Getty's (11r-c, 11r-d) — necessarily, since no other manuscript depicts them.
- Coverage. Getty four; Pisani Dossi two ([21], [22]); Paris two ([21], [22]); Morgan none.