Getty 12v
The page alternates counter, play, counter, play — [Dagger 36] answers the shoulder break, [Dagger 37] takes the dagger at the elbow, [Dagger 38] answers that, and [Dagger 39] throws. So no figure here stands unanswered except the last, and the last is answered by the first plate of the next folio.
Because in the play before you wanted to break my arm over your shoulder, for that play I make you this counter: with such force I will dash you to the ground for dead, so that you never again do wrong to me or to others.
- Answers [Dagger 35] — the arm going over his shoulder.
- The Getty gives no mechanism at all. It names the situation and the outcome and nothing between them.
- The outcome: dash him to the ground with force, for dead.
- And a motive that is not tactical: "so that you never again do wrong to me or to others." The counter is punitive.
One of the few places the book gives a reason to finish a man that is not about winning the exchange.
I will take the dagger from your hand, for I am well prepared; and I will draw the point upward close by your elbow. And you will lose it, and I will strike you with it at once. Because I could not bend your arm, I make this taking of the dagger (tor di daga) against you.
- Read the last sentence first, because it is the condition: you tried to bend his arm and could not. The taking is the fallback, not the plan.
- So: take the dagger from his hand — "for I am well prepared".
- The mechanism: draw the point upward, close by his elbow. The elbow is the fixed point the dagger is levered against.
- He loses it, and you strike him with it at once.
- The verse gives the action a different shape: it is a turn (volta) made close by the elbow, which the Paris calls a "violent whirl".
Named here as tor di daga, the taking of the dagger — the first of [Dagger 8]'s five things and the section's most repeated action. [Dagger 62]–[Dagger 63] take at the elbow the same way; the family is the dagger's answer to the sword's three takings (Tactical grouping §5).
I make you the counter of the play before, so that you do not take my dagger in such a way. I will see to it that, by pushing you with my left hand, you will let go of my dagger; and with cruel thrusts I will strike you, to your woe.
- Answers [Dagger 37]'s taking.
- The mechanism is one word: push him with your left hand.
- The push makes him let go of your dagger — the disarm is undone by pressure, not by a counter-grip.
- Then strike with thrusts, "cruel" ones.
- The verse frames it as turn against turn: his turning does not get the dagger; "rather, with my own [turn] I will strike you".
The left-hand push is the section's universal solvent. It turns Greater Strength at [Dagger 34], it turns the Second Master at [Dagger 42], and Fiore eventually calls it the counter to the close play as such ([Dagger 88], [Dagger 91]).
You must go entirely to the ground, and you will be able to make neither defense nor counter. And I will make the dagger go far from you, rather than take it into my hand, for I know this art with every deception.
- He goes entirely to the ground — the Getty asserts the throw without describing it.
- Neither defense nor counter is available to him.
- The unusual choice: do not take the dagger — send it far away. The section's instinct everywhere else is to keep the taken dagger and use it ([Dagger 13], [Dagger 35], [Dagger 37]); this play deliberately does the opposite.
- The reason offered is not mechanical: "for I know this art with every deception" (cum ogni ingano).
- What the Getty does not mention — and what the next plate reveals — is that this scholar has hold of the player's leg ([Dagger 40]).
The one play in the section that throws the dagger away rather than keep it. The text gives no reason beyond craft.
Glossological analysis
- tor di daga ([37]) — the taking of the dagger, named as a term here for the first time in the section. First of [Dagger 8]'s five things and the emblem of [Dagger 13].
- cubito ([37]) — the elbow, here as the fulcrum of a disarm rather than as a target. The same joint the blow-map used as its boundary ([Dagger 9]–[Dagger 11]) and the counters use as their handle ([Dagger 42]).
- penzando / penta ([38]) — pushing / a push. The noun is named at [Dagger 42] and [Dagger 91]; this is the same action, and the section's most portable counter.
- ingano ([39]) — deception, craft: "I know this art with every deception". Approving, as at [Dagger 17]'s verse. Ingano is not "engine" and carries no moral charge — it is the name for knowing more than your opponent does.
- crudele punte ([38]) — "cruel thrusts". Punta is the thrust throughout the book, and "cruel and mortal" is the standing epithet the longsword's thrusts carry too ([S2H 11]).
- volta (PD, [37]) — the turn the taking is made of: "per apresso el tuo cubito façando volta". The Getty describes the same act as drawing the point upward. Same plate, two vocabularies.
Manuscript comparison
- The Paris drops out here. It carries [37] (23r-c) and [39] (23v-a) but has no text for [36] or [38] — both counters. From [35] to [44] the Latin keeps the plays and skips the answers to them; the Paris's dagger is a thinner and more offensive book than either Italian witness.
- A real divergence at [37]: what the disarm is. The Getty draws the point upward, close by the elbow — a lift. The Pisani Dossi makes it a turn ("per apresso el tuo cubito façando volta") and the Paris a violent whirl ("violento turbine") that turns the arms near the elbow. Lift or spin: the two families describe the same plate with different mechanics — and only the Getty supplies the condition that motivates it at all ("because I could not bend your arm, I make this taking of the dagger against you").
- The prose owns the conditions again. [37]'s failed arm-bend and [39]'s refusal to keep the dagger are both Getty-only. The couplets give the outcome and stop: "Your dagger will be taken from you right quickly", "To make you fall is no effort at all for me". The verse family's dagger has no fallbacks and no refusals.
- Illustrations. [36]–[38] are the Pisani Dossi's (07a-d, 07a-e, 07a-f); [39] is the Getty's own (12v-d) — and it is the only picture we have of a throw whose one distinguishing feature, the seized leg, no text on this folio mentions. We learn of the leg only from the counter at [Dagger 40].
- Coverage. Getty four; Pisani Dossi four; Paris two ([37], [39]); Morgan none.