Spear
Six spear Masters, three forehand and three backhand, each standing in a guard borrowed from the longsword system.
Folios
Folio summary — Spear
| Getty folio | Plates | Content | Getty images | Verse witnesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (none) | [1] | The rule of the long spear | — | Pisani Dossi 15b |
| 39r | [2], [3] | First and second forehand Masters (the Iron Gates) | [2], [3] | PD 15b · Paris 6v–7r |
| 39v | [4], [5], [6] | Third forehand Master, the strike, the counter | [4], [6] | PD 15b · Paris 7r–7v |
| 40r | [7]–[10] | The three backhand Masters, and the strike | — | PD 16a |
Three Getty folios plus a verse-only rubric, 10 plates, 13 illustrations. This is the most economical section in the book: six Masters, two plays, one counter — and the six Masters are not the spear's own invention. They are the longsword's guards handed a shaft: Full Iron Gate, Middle Iron Gate, Window Guard right and left, Boar's Tooth, True Cross, with the borrowing announced in the first sentence of the section's prose ("we agree to take up those [guards] of the sword") rather than left for a reader to notice. What the spear contributes is one rule, legislated by the verse rubric at [1] and demonstrated four times over: step and beat out of the way, and the strike is already inside the same pace. Everything else — the exchange of thrusts, the beat to the ground, the guards themselves — is imported.
The witnesses divide along that seam. The Paris copies the forehand trio and its counter and quits at [6]. The Pisani Dossi alone states the architecture ([1]'s six Masters, [7]'s crowned fourth Master) and alone omits the counter. The Morgan shadows the Getty almost word for word but runs [6] into [5] without a break, so the counter has no heading of its own. And the two prose copies, which agree everywhere else, disagree once and substantively — at [3], over which man is holding the short spear, where the Morgan has the verse family on its side and the Getty stands alone against its own next sentence.