Getty 13r
The page turns over: [Dagger 40] closes the First Master's long run with a rebuke, and the Second Master opens immediately with crossed arms. With [Dagger 44] on the next folio that is his entire family — four plates, against the First Master's twenty-four.
What is said is not always done. I am the counter of the scholar before me, who is a great fool; for I have known how to do so much that he was forced to release my leg, and in this way I put the dagger in his face, to show that he is mad and foolish.
- Opens with a proverb rather than a technique: "What is said is not always done." It is aimed straight at the previous plate, which claimed you could make "neither defense nor counter" ([Dagger 39]).
- This is the counter to [Dagger 39] — and it tells us what [Dagger 39] withheld: that scholar had hold of your leg.
- Make him release the leg. How is not said, only that "I have known how to do so much" that he had to.
- Put the dagger in his face.
- The stated purpose of the face-strike is not damage but demonstration: to show that he is mad and foolish.
The book arguing with itself. [Dagger 39] declared itself counter-proof; [Dagger 40] is its counter, and calls its author a great fool for saying so. The identical claim goes unchallenged at [Dagger 23] and [Dagger 51].
I play with the arms crossed in order to make the remedies that have gone before. And if we were both armored, we would not care to make a better cover. No stronger remedy than I wears a crown, for I can play forehand and backhand, and also cross below as well as above.
- The Second Master: he plays with the arms crossed — the guard of [Dagger 5]–[Dagger 6], promoted to a Master.
- His purpose is not new plays. He crosses in order to make the remedies that have gone before — the First Master's family, entered a different way.
- In armor the cover is unimprovable: "we would not care to make a better cover."
- His claim to rank: no stronger remedy wears a crown. He says he is the strongest Master in the section.
- His grounds, three: he plays forehand, he plays backhand, and he can cross below as well as above.
The Second Master is an entry, not a repertoire. He exists to reach the First Master's plays from a crossed position — which is why his own family is four plates long and the First Master's is twenty-four.
I make the counter of the King who crosses before me, so that with his crossing he will not trouble me: I will give his elbow such a push (penta) that I will make him turn, and I will strike him at once.
- Answers the Second Master ([Dagger 41]).
- Push his elbow (penta) — the same left-hand push that undid [Dagger 33] and [Dagger 37].
- The push turns him.
- Strike him at once, in the turn.
- That is the whole counter to the Master who said no stronger remedy wears a crown: one push, at one joint.
Fiore will generalize it: the elbow-push "is good against every close play of the dagger, of the poleaxe, and of the sword, in armor and out of armor" ([Dagger 91]), and is "above all the counter to the holds of the close play" ([Dagger 88]).
By this grip that I have, so strong, I would think to give death to anyone. For I can break your arm, and I can throw you to the ground, and I can take your dagger. Also I hold you bound in the upper lock (soprana ligadura). And from these four things you will not be freed from me.
- The Second Master's one scholar, working from a grip already made, and a strong one.
- The grip is an upper lock (soprana ligadura) — he is not threatening to lock; he has locked.
- From it, four things, enumerated: break the arm; throw him to the ground; take the dagger; and the lock he is already holding.
- From these four you will not be freed. The claim is not that any one of them works but that the set is inescapable.
- Which to use, and what chooses between them, is not stated.
Four of [Dagger 8]'s five things from one grip, named as a set — [Dagger 8]'s "one does not abandon the other" compressed into a single plate. The counter at [Dagger 44] will answer the set rather than any member of it.
Glossological analysis
- soprana ligadura ([43]) — the upper lock, third of the section's three named locks (with the middle at [Dagger 19] and the lower at [Dagger 54]). Its own fixed references come later ([Dagger 58], [Dagger 85]); this is its first appearance.
- penta ([42]) — a push, the noun of penzere. The elbow-push: the section's most general counter, generalized explicitly at [Dagger 88] and [Dagger 91].
- incrosare / brazi crosadi ([41]) — crossing / crossed arms. The word is the sword's ([S2H 27], [S2H 49]), where it means the blades meeting; here nothing meets — it is the speaker's own arms that cross each other. Same term, different referent.
- dritto e riverso ([41]) — forehand and backhand, the pair from [Dagger 10]–[Dagger 11]. The Second Master claims both; the Third Master takes only the backhand ([Dagger 47]).
- Re che incrosa ([42]) — "the King who crosses". The counters address the Masters by their defining action rather than their number — the habit that makes the cross-references legible without a table of contents.
- matto e stolto ([40]) — "mad and foolish". The section's only insult, and it is aimed at one of Fiore's own scholars.
Manuscript comparison
- The Getty's prose is the Pisani Dossi's couplet, extended. Set them side by side at [41]. Pisani Dossi: "E me covro cum li braci incrosadi / E posso far i zoghi tuti denanci passadi". Getty: "Io zogho cum gli brazi crosadi per far li remedii che denanzi sono passadi. E si noii fossemo trambi doii armadi non curarem di far miglor coverta." The Getty keeps the couplet's rhyme and adds a third line to it — armadi — before continuing in prose. This is the shared verse substrate of Manuscript comparison §3 caught in the act: the prose author had the couplet and grew his explanation out of its rhyme.
- What each family adds at [41] is different. Getty-only: "no stronger remedy than I wears a crown", the armored rating, and "cross below as well as above". Pisani Dossi-only: "aquilli de man riverssa non cavo nessuno / Che tuti li posso far a'uno a'uno" — of the backhand plays I except none; I can do them all, one by one. The verse claims the Third Master's entire family for the Second Master. The prose does not.
- The verse counts differently at [43]. The Getty's four things: break the arm, throw, take the dagger, and hold in the upper lock. The Pisani Dossi's four: "La daga tore, dislogare, e anche ligare, / E metere in terra" — take the dagger, dislocate, lock, throw. The prose has a break (rompere) where the verse has a dislocation (dislogare) — actions the corpus keeps distinct everywhere else ([Grappling 7]) — and the prose specifies which lock while the verse does not.
- No Paris on this page at all. [40]–[43] have no Latin. What the Paris does have for the Second Master it files under [44], and it turns out not to be [44] — see the next folio.
- A scribal slip at [43]. The Getty writes "a zaschuno crderia[!] dar la morte" for crederia, "I would think to give death to anyone" — a dropped syllable, of the same family as 9r's doublings.
- Illustrations. [40] is the Getty's (13r-a) — the only Getty figure on the page, and the only picture of the released leg; [41]–[43] are the Pisani Dossi's (07b-c, 07b-d, 07b-e). Coverage: Getty four, Pisani Dossi four, Paris none, Morgan none.