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Pisani Dossi 9b (no Getty text)
The two Fourth Master plays the Getty omits
The Pisani Dossi's page for the Fourth Master carries six plays where the Getty's 14v carries four. These are the two left over: the scholar's disarm that the Master's own verse promised, and a second throw. Both survive in the Pisani Dossi alone, verse and picture, with no prose anywhere to unpack them.
[57] Scholar's disarm from the Master's hold
Pisani Dossi · 09b-b
Illustration: Pisani Dossi 09b-b · Text: Pisani Dossi 9b-b
Pisani Dossi · verse translation
My Master has spoken the truth without fail:
I can take the dagger from you, and you cannot get away.
Flow of actions
- This is the scholar the Fourth Master's own verse promised: "in that way the first scholar gives you trouble" ([Dagger 56]).
- He keeps the Master's two-handed hold and takes the dagger; the player cannot break away.
- That is all the text gives. No hand, no foot, no turn, no lock is named. What the scholar actually does has to be read off the picture — or borrowed from the Getty's [Dagger 56], where the Master strips the dagger by turning to the right side without releasing the arm.
[60] Throw to the ground
Pisani Dossi · 09b-e
Illustration: Pisani Dossi 09b-e · Text: Pisani Dossi 9b-e
Pisani Dossi · verse translation
I see that you are about to go to the ground at once;
be certain of that — but not of getting up.
Flow of actions
- A throw from the Fourth Master's hold, standing between the second upper lock ([Dagger 59]) and the elbow-and-knee throw ([Dagger 61]).
- The player goes down at once, and does not get up.
- The mechanics are not recoverable from the text. The couplet names no grip, no direction, and no foot; it states an outcome and a threat. With no Getty prose and no Paris verse, the plate is the only witness to what this play is.
Glossological analysis
- "take the dagger" (tor di daga) ([57]) — the section's name for the disarm as a named technique, given in full at [Dagger 37] and [Dagger 79]. Here it is not a step in a play; it is the play.
- "My Master has spoken the truth" ([57]) — the scholar's formula of attestation. A scholar's couplet routinely opens by confirming the Master's boast, and the Fourth Master's verse at [Dagger 56] had named this scholar in advance: the two couplets are written to interlock.
- "be certain of that — but not of getting up" ([60]) — the Pisani Dossi's stock ironic reversal, the same register as "you have got off cheaply" at [Dagger 58] and the bon merchato / derada ("great bargain", [Dagger 46]) idiom that runs through the verse family.
- Silence as evidence — neither couplet names a hand, a foot, a turn, or a lock. The Pisani Dossi verse is a caption to a picture, not an instruction. On the plays the Getty does not carry, that distinction stops being a matter of style and becomes the limit of what is knowable.
Manuscript comparison
- Single-witness plays. [57] and [60] exist in the Pisani Dossi alone — no Getty prose, no Paris verse, and no Morgan, which carries no dagger section at all. Two of the section's genuinely unsupported plates.
- The Fourth Master's verse points at a plate the Getty cannot see. [Dagger 56]'s couplet promises that "the first scholar gives you trouble". In the Pisani Dossi that forward reference resolves here, at [57]. In the Getty it resolves nowhere — which is very likely why the Getty rewrote [56] to have the Master strip the dagger himself. The prose family repaired a dangling reference by absorbing the missing play into the Master's own text.
- The Getty's pruning is not simply de-duplication. If the Getty were trimming redundancy, [Dagger 58] and [Dagger 59] — two upper locks with one counter and no stated difference — would be the obvious cut. It kept both and dropped these instead.
- Illustrations. Both plates are the Pisani Dossi's own (9b-b, 9b-e). No other witness illustrates them.