Getty 38v
Four scholars of the Fifth Master, all answering the same problem: a man has you by the collar with a dagger up. Two break the grip by striking the arm that holds you ([67], [69]) — and both break off mid-play to explain that the same action frees a man caught on a lance. The other two skip the release and simply throw him ([71], [72]).
This is another way of ruining your arm, and I do this play in order to come into other plays and holds. I say further that if I were caught on the iron of a lance, striking against it in this way either I would free myself from the iron, or I would part the haft from the iron head.
- He has you by the collar ([Dagger 66]).
- Strike near his elbow — "another way of ruining your arm" than the Master's own.
- He has to let go. The verse supplies the follow-up the prose withholds: at once go and find his dagger.
- Fiore states the play's purpose outright: it is done "in order to come into other plays and holds" — a transition, not a finish.
- The digression: the same striking action, applied to a lance's iron that has caught you, will either free you from the iron or part the haft from the head.
The arm-break and the lance-break are one motion at two scales, and Fiore says so unprompted in the middle of a dagger play.
This is another way to make him let go, and better still for freeing oneself from a lance. I say further that if I strike you with force on the joint of the hand that holds me by the collar, I hold myself certain that I will dislocate it, if you do not snatch it away. I want to reveal the counter: as the scholar comes down with his arms to dislocate the player's hand, the player must at once take his hand off the scholar's collar, and at once with the dagger he can ruin him in the chest.
- He has you by the collar.
- Strike with force on the joint of the hand that holds you — the wrist, not the arm this time.
- It dislocates — with one stated condition: "if you do not snatch it away."
- The lance version, from the verse: strike the lance a great blow, break it at the socket (doiia) where the iron meets the haft, and come to close quarters.
- Counter, revealed by the play itself: as the scholar comes down with his arms to wreck the hand, the player takes his hand off the collar at once — and with that hand free and his dagger already up, ruins the scholar in the chest.
The counter is the play's own precondition turned around. Everything the Fifth Master does depends on the grip staying where it is; let go and his whole family collapses.
In this way I mean to throw you to the ground before the dagger can come near me. And if your dagger is halfway along its path to strike me, I will let go the holds I have and will follow your dagger; for you will not be able to harm me in any way at all, since with the plays of the remedies I will do you villainy.
- He has you by the collar and the dagger is on its way.
- Do not bother making him let go: throw him before the dagger can reach you. Beat the strike rather than answer it.
- If the dagger is already halfway along its path — too late to win that race — then let go the holds you have and follow the dagger: abandon the throw and go with the weapon instead.
- From there, work the plays of the remedies ([Dagger 17] onward) on him.
A rare explicit instruction to drop a hold mid-play. It is the dagger's version of the grappling doctrine at [Grappling 9]: a hold that is not good is swapped, not persisted with.
This is a play for making him let go — except that if I advance my right foot behind your left, you could go to the ground without fail. And if this play does not suffice me, with others I will give you a taste (tasta) of your own dagger; for my heart and my eye look to nothing else than taking the dagger from you without delay or tarrying.
- A play "for making him let go" — the folio's third answer to the same collar-grip.
- If you advance your right foot behind his left, the release turns into a throw: he "could go to the ground without fail."
- If that does not suffice, move on to other plays and give him "a taste (tasta) of your own dagger".
- The priority is stated flatly: "my heart and my eye look to nothing else than taking the dagger from you without delay or tarrying." The release and the throw are both means; the disarm is the end.
Glossological analysis
- doiia ([69], verse) — the socket of a lance-head, the collar of iron where the head is fitted to the haft. Its structural weak point. The Getty at [67] names the same joint without the word: "part the haft from the iron head."
- "the joint of the hand" ([69]) — the wrist. Fiore's anatomy is functional throughout the dagger: he names joints by what they do, and targets them because they are where a thing — an arm, a lance — can be made to come apart.
- tasta ([72]) — a taste, from tastare, to taste or test. "A taste of your own dagger" — the same ironic register as bon merchato, and the same appetite for the enemy's blade as [Dagger 64].
- "follow your dagger" ([71]) — follow here means go with, track the weapon, not pursue it. The instruction is to abandon the hold and stay with the threat, which is why it reads as surrender and is not.
- the lance digressions ([67], [69]) — twice on one folio the dagger text breaks off to explain freeing oneself from a lance. Not strays: the Fifth Master's problem and the lance's are formally identical — something has fixed your body — and get the same answer, strike the thing that holds you, at its joint. This is the dagger's clearest link out to [Spear] and [Spear-Other].
- "in order to come into other plays and holds" ([67]) — the play declaring itself a transition, not a finish. Fiore states this outright only rarely; when he does, it reclassifies the play.
Manuscript comparison
- The lance material sits in a different place in each family. The Getty folds the lance into the dagger plays as asides, at [67] and again at [69]. The Pisani Dossi gives it its own plates — and puts them on folio 16b, far from the Fifth Master's run at 10a–11a; both [Dagger 68] and this folio's [69] verse come from there. The two families agree the material belongs to this Master and disagree completely about where it goes on the page.
- [69]'s counter is the Getty's alone, and it is among the fullest in the section — the player drops the collar and takes the scholar in the chest. The Pisani Dossi's couplet is about the lance instead, and there is no Paris verse for [69] at all.
- [67]: the verse finishes what the prose starts. The Getty says the strike is made "to come into other plays and holds" and stops. The Pisani Dossi says which one: "at once I will come to find your dagger." The Paris agrees with the verse ("with strength I will suddenly go for your dagger"). Both verse witnesses name the follow-up that the prose deliberately withholds.
- [72]: all three witnesses concede the play can fail. Getty: you "could" go to the ground. Pisani Dossi: "if you do not go down by this one, I will do another play on you." Paris: "if I do not throw you down, I will perhaps prepare a better one." A rare case of the families agreeing on a caveat instead of each boasting past the others.
- Illustrations. All four figures are the Pisani Dossi's, and they are gathered from three different Pisani Dossi pages (10a-f, 16b-c, 10b-c, 10b-b) to furnish one Getty folio. No Getty figure appears on this page.
- Coverage. Getty and Pisani Dossi carry all four; the Paris lacks [69]. Morgan, as always in the dagger, has none.