Sword in One Hand
The sword alone against three players: covers, strikes, the middle lock, the under-hilt disarm, and the breaking of the thrust.
Folios
Folio summary — Sword in One Hand
| Getty folio | Plates | Content | Getty images | Verse witnesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20r | [1], [2] | The Master and the three players | [1] (both figures) | PD 13a-c · Paris 10r-d |
| (none) | [3] | Cover and thrust to the chest | — | PD 13a-d · Paris 10v-b |
| 21v | [4], [14], [15] | The armored thrust; the last two plays | — | PD 13b-a, 14b-c–d · Paris 10v-d |
| (none) | [5] | Strike to the head after a swift cover | — | PD 13b-b · Paris 11r-a |
| 20v | [6]–[9] | The scholar's covers and first binds | — | PD 13b-c–d, 14a-a, 14a-c · Paris 11r-d, 11v-b |
| 21r | [10]–[13] | Taking, elbow turn, breaking of the thrust | — | PD 14a-b, 14a-d, 14b-a–b · Paris 11v-d, 12r-b, 12r-d |
Four Getty folios plus two verse-only plates, 15 plates, 18 illustrations — of which only two are the Getty's own, both hung on [1], so that the Master's own plate carries no picture. This is the section where the corpus's two recensions come closest to being two different books. They order the plays differently ([7] stands before [6] in every witness but the concordance; [8] before [7] in both verse copies and after it in the prose); they place the armored thrust in different parts of the section ([4]: fourth in the verse, last in the Getty); the Pisani Dossi has two plays the Getty never had ([3], [5]) and the Getty has plays the verse never had; and at [8] and [15] the two families put different plays on the same plate — a lock against a disarm, a sword at the neck against a sword bent or broken.
Within each family the division of labour is the familiar one, but it runs in both directions here rather than one. The prose supplies the conditions and the cross-references — be armored ([4]); the dagger's middle lock ([8]); one pass of the rear foot buys the whole close play ([6]). The verse supplies the mechanics and the names — the left hand joined to the sword ([4]); the hand beneath the hilt ([8]); the rompere de punta ([13]). Neither witness alone contains the section. Two internal checks are worth recording: Fiore's own cross-reference from [Dagger-Sword 4] to "the fourth play of the sword in one hand" lands exactly on Getty 20v-d when the Getty's pages are counted in order, confirming that the prose manuscript's sequence is Fiore's own — and equally that the numbering used in this file is not.
What every witness agrees on is the elbow: push it, turn the man, and take his back ([11], [12], [14]) — the same push the dagger Master uses against a swordsman ([Dagger-Sword 3]–[Dagger-Sword 4]) and the same one that counters two of the dagger's Kings ([Dagger 88], [Dagger 94]). And note the premise the section's title states and its plays quietly qualify: the sword is in one hand, but the left hand is never idle — it goes under his hilt ([8]), around his arm ([9]), onto his elbow ([11], [12], [14]), and, once, onto your own blade ([4]).