Getty 41r
The section proper opens on the asymmetry of reach: a Master with the shorter lance explains how he beats the longer one aside, and the counter answers by refusing him the leverage. The two plates are a matched pair — problem and answer — and both are fought from the same guard.
I carry my lance in the guard of the Boar's Tooth (posta di dente di cenghiaro), because I am well armored and have a shorter lance than my companion; and so I reckon on beating his lance out of the way (fora de strada) — that is, across (ala traversa) or else upward. And I will strike with my lance against his, an arm's length in [from its point] with an arm's length of my own shaft, and my lance will run on into his body, and his lance will go off the line far from me. And in this way I shall do it.
(The scribe notes at 41r-b: "This gloss goes with the King on this side" — assigning the paragraph to the crowned Master.)
- Carry the lance low, in the Boar's Tooth — the same low guard as [Grappling 3] and [S2H 20], here holding a lance instead of a hand or a sword.
- Note the two stated conditions, which are the reason for the guard: you are well armored, and your lance is the shorter. Neither is an advantage on its own; the play is built on having both.
- Ride in and beat his lance out of the way (fora de strada) — across (ala traversa), or else upward.
- The measure is given exactly: strike an arm's length in from his point, with an arm's length of your own shaft. This is a lever, not a swat — you take his weak with your strong.
- His lance goes wide of you; yours runs on into his body in the same motion. The beat and the thrust are one action, not two.
(The scribe notes at 41r-b: "This gloss goes with the King on this side" — assigning the paragraph to the crowned Master.)
The armor is not there to absorb his lance — it is what lets the shorter man accept the closer measure the beat requires.
a word in the Paris couplet is illegible in the transcription (Utque [??] variare queam); rendered with an ellipsis.
This is the counter (contrario) of the play of the lance that came before: when one rides against the other with sharpened steel (a ferri moladi), and one has a shorter lance than the other, then when he who has the short lance carries it low in the Boar's Tooth (dente di cenghiaro), he who has the long lance should likewise carry his low, so that the short one cannot beat aside the long, in the way that is depicted here.
- The situation is named first: two riders closing with sharpened steel (a ferri moladi), one lance shorter than the other.
- You are the man with the long lance. He carries his short one low, in the Boar's Tooth ([Mounted 2]).
- Do not carry high against him. Match him: carry your long lance low as well.
- That is the whole counter. Levelled to the same line, the short lance has nothing under it to lift and nothing above it to cross — it cannot get to the long one to beat it, and the reach advantage decides.
The counter to a leverage play is to deny the lever, not to contest it. Compare [Mounted 9], where the same logic is applied against a sword: put the lance where the beat cannot reach.
the Pisani Dossi gives two couplets here (29a-c and 29a-d): the first speaks for the master carrying the short lance low, the second for the counter who matches his carry.
Glossological analysis
- posta di dente di cenghiaro ([2], [3]) — the Boar's Tooth, here a lance guard: carried low, striking upward "like the tusk of the boar" (Glossary). The section takes its guards from the general repertoire and re-specializes them to the saddle; this one recurs mounted with the sword at [Mounted 10] and on foot with the spear at [Spear 7].
- fora de strada ([2]) — "out of the road", i.e. off the line. Strada is the line of the attack, not a street. Recurs at [Mounted 9], where the lancer's whole purpose is to keep his lance from being put fora de strada.
- ala traversa ([2]) — "across, crosswise": the sideways beat, as opposed to in erto (upward). The pair traversa / in erto is the section's standing distinction for which way a beat travels, restated as doctrine for the sword at [Mounted 12].
- a ferri moladi ([3]) — "with sharpened steel" (molare = to grind/whet). The phrase marks the encounter as earnest rather than sporting — lances with ground points, not coronals.
- uno brazo in entro cum uno brazo dela mia hasta ([2]) — "an arm's length in, with an arm's length of my shaft": Fiore measures the beat in body-units. Hasta is the shaft, distinguished from the head.
- contrario ([3]) — counter, the third term of the Remedy → scholar → counter chain (Tactical grouping §1). This section is unusually counter-dense: nine of its thirty-two plates are counters.
- Re (scribal note, 41r-b) — the King, i.e. the crowned Master. The Getty's "questa glosa va al Re di qua" is a production instruction, not doctrine: it tells the rubricator which figure the paragraph belongs to.
Manuscript comparison
- A real divergence at [2]: which way the beat goes. The Getty tells the short lance to beat "ala traversa overo in erto" — across or else upward. The Morgan reads "ala taiversa[!] e non in erto" — across and not upward. Prose copy against prose copy, and the difference is doctrinal: the Getty permits an upward beat, the Morgan forbids it. The Morgan's reading is the one the Getty itself endorses later — at [Mounted 12] the Getty gives the rule for the sword as "ala traversa e non in erto", and the Morgan agrees there too. On the balance of the witnesses' own doctrine, the Getty's overo at [2] looks like the slip.
- The Morgan is fuller at [2]. It closes "…as is depicted and written here", a formula the Getty drops. Its scribe also slips: taiversa for traversa, one of several transposition errors in this copy.
- The verse witnesses compress the mechanics away. The Getty's arm's-length measure and the named target survive in neither couplet: the Pisani Dossi keeps only the guard and the intent ("to deflect yours, I will make mine enter"), and the Paris keeps the guard (sub aprino dente) and heightens the wound ("I will pierce to the marrow"). Neither verse mentions the short lance — the whole premise of the Getty's play.
- A hole in the Paris. The Latin couplet at [2] is illegible in the transcription at one word (Utque [??] variare queam) and is rendered with an ellipsis; the Paris has no text for [3] at all, so the verse family's Latin arm carries the play but not its counter.
- The Pisani Dossi doubles [3]. It gives two couplets (29a-c and 29a-d) where the other witnesses give one paragraph: the first speaks for the short-lance Master, the second for the counter who matches his carry. The verse splits across the two riders what the prose narrates from outside them.
- Illustrations. Both plates are shown from the Pisani Dossi (29a-a…d) — two figures each, the paired riders. The Getty's own 41r plates are not the ones reproduced.