Getty 20r
The section's opening, and one scene across two plates: three players announce how they will kill the Master — one with the thrust, one with the cut, one by hurling his sword — and the Master answers with the single defense that every play in the section then elaborates. The page is shared with the section before it: [Dagger-Sword 10] sits above, at 20r-a.
We are three players (zugadori) who want to kill this Master. One of us is to strike at him with the thrust, another with the cut, and the other means to hurl his sword against the said Master. So it will be a great feat indeed if he is not killed — may God make him truly sorry.
- Three players stand against one Master. This plate is the attack side of the unit — there is no technique in it to perform.
- Their division of labour is stated exactly: one will thrust, one will cut, one will hurl his sword at him.
- Their own assessment: he will surely be killed, and it will be a great feat if he is not.
- What the plate does is set the problem the Master must solve at [Sword1H 2] — three men, three different attacks, one of them a thrown weapon, and a sword held in one hand.
Doctrine rather than technique: the plate exists to define the terms. Note that the players concede the point in advance — the boast is theirs, but so is the admission that surviving them would be a great feat.
You are wicked men and know little of this art. Do the deeds — words have no place here. Come one by one, whoever knows what to do and can, for even if you were a hundred I would ruin you all, by this guard which is so good and strong. I advance the foot that is in front a little out of the way (fora de strada), and with the left I step on the traverse (ala traversa). And in that step I cover myself, beating aside (rebattendo) the swords; I find you uncovered and I shall make certain of striking you. And if lance or sword is hurled at me, I beat them all aside as I have told you, stepping out of the way, as you will see in my plays that follow — do look at them, I pray you. And even with the sword in one hand I will work my art, as you will see in these pages.
- Stand in the guard and wait; the standing condition is that they come one by one.
- Advance the front foot a little out of the way (fora de strada) — off the line the attack is travelling on.
- With the left foot, step on the traverse (ala traversa) — across, not forward.
- In that step, cover: beat the swords aside (rebattendo). Step and cover are one action, which is why the step is what he describes and the cover is what it produces.
- He is now uncovered: strike, and "make certain" of it.
- The same answer serves a thrown weapon: if lance or sword is hurled at you, beat it aside the same way, stepping out of the way.
- And all of it with the sword in one hand — the section's premise, stated as a boast.
The Master never names his guard. Compare [Sword-Spear 1], where the swordsman awaiting three men gives the identical defense — front foot fora de strada, left foot across, beat aside — and does name it: the Boar's Tooth. The same play, and only one of the two Masters tells you where to stand.
Glossological analysis
- fora de strada ([2]) — "out of the way", literally "off the road": the front foot's step off the line the attack travels. Strada is that line, not a street. It is the section's foundational idea, and the swordsman awaiting three spearmen uses the identical formula ([Sword-Spear 1]), as does the mounted man beating a lance ([Mounted 7]).
- ala traversa ([2]) — "on the traverse", across: the left foot's crossing step, paired with fora de strada as one two-footed action. The same word governs beating a weapon sideways rather than upward in the mounted section ([Mounted 22]) — traversa is Fiore's direction of choice against anything committed.
- rebattendo / rebattere ([2]) — beating aside: Fiore's verb for taking an incoming weapon out of line, including a thrown one. It is what the second longsword guard exists for ([S2H 3]), and what the dagger Master does against a sword ([Dagger-Sword 1]).
- lançada / lanzare ([1], [2]) — hurled, thrown. One of the three players throws his own sword, and the Master answers thrown lance and sword in the same breath as cut and thrust. The thrown weapon is a normal part of the problem here, not a curiosity.
- zugadori ([1]) — the players, and unusually there are three of them, speaking in chorus. The zugadore is normally the single man the Master acts upon (Glossary); this is the one place in the book where the role is a crowd.
- guardia ([2]) — guard — and note what is missing: the Master names no guard, saying only "this guard which is so good and strong." The section runs its whole length without a guard-name, though it names its targets constantly (chest, head, face, neck, throat).
- tor de spada / ligadure (PD, [2]) — takings of the sword / locks: the verse's advertisement of what the scholars will show. Both are borrowed families — the takings systematized in the longsword ([S2H 75], [S2H 77], [S2H 78]), the locks fixed in the dagger ([Dagger 19]) — and both duly appear, at [Sword1H 10] and [Sword1H 8].
Manuscript comparison
- Two introductions that introduce different things. The Getty's Master gets a full tactical program: the two-footed step, the beat, the extension to thrown weapons, the promise of the plays. The Pisani Dossi gives him eight lines — long for that witness — and spends them as a table of contents, advertising what the scholars will show: "covers and strikes, takings of the sword and locks without fail." The prose explains the mechanics; the verse lists the curriculum. Neither is a translation of the other.
- The Paris compresses to three lines and changes the Master's temper. It keeps only the boast, but adds a weapon the Italian does not name among the thrown things — a spear — and renders the Master's contempt as amusement: "this ward teaches me not to be afraid now, but to laugh." The Getty's Master is angry ("You are wicked men and know little of this art"); the Paris's is entertained.
- Morgan at [1]: wound, not kill. The three players want to wound (ferir) the Master where the Getty has kill (alcider) — the plate's whole stake, softened by one word. Otherwise the two prose copies run near-verbatim, as they do throughout (Manuscript comparison §6).
- Morgan at [2]: it stops one clause early. It ends at "I will work my art", lacking the Getty's "as you will see in these pages" — the phrase that promises the section that follows.
- Illustrations. Wiktenauer hangs both of the Getty's figures on this page (20r-c, 20r-d) on [1], so the Master's own plate [2] shows no illustration here even though 20r-d is his. These two are the only Getty illustrations in the entire section; everything after this page is seen through the Pisani Dossi, with two Paris plates and one Morgan.
- A shared folio. The upper half of Getty 20r belongs to the previous section — [Dagger-Sword 10] at 20r-a — and the sword in one hand begins at 20r-c. Our concordance assigns no numbered play to 20r-b.