Getty 21v
The Getty's last folio of the section, and the one place where its order breaks down. 21v-a and 21v-b carry the section's final two plays ([Sword1H 14], [Sword1H 15]); 21v-c then carries a play that both verse witnesses place fourth, near the front — an armored thrust sitting, in the Getty, after everything else in the section.
This is a play in which whoever wants to place such a thrust should be armored. When someone strikes at you with thrust and cut, you make the cover, and immediately place this [thrust] on him in the way that is depicted.
- The precondition comes first, before any technique: whoever wants to place this thrust should be armored. Fiore leads with the condition and treats the rest as secondary.
- He strikes at you with thrust and cut (the Morgan reads "thrust or cut").
- Make the cover.
- Immediately place this thrust — and here the Getty stops, deferring to the picture ("in the way that is depicted").
- What the prose omits, the verse supplies: the left hand is joined to the sword (la man sinistra ala spada si'o zunta); the Paris says it holds the sword "with strength".
The one place in the section where the second hand comes to your own blade rather than to the opponent. The left hand at the sword for an armored thrust is the half-sword idea ([S2H 5], [SwordArmor]) — but no witness here says where on the blade the hand goes, and Fiore does not use the term.
in the Getty this play stands at folio 21v-c, physically after all the other plays of this section (20r–21v-b); the concordance places it fourth to match the Pisani Dossi and Paris order.
By the turn that I made you make, pushing you by the elbow, I have come to this position (partido) very quickly, in order to throw you to the ground, so that you make war neither on me nor on anyone else.
- You have already pushed him by the elbow and made him turn ([Sword1H 11], [Sword1H 12]).
- That turn has brought you to this position (partido), and "very quickly" — the speed is the elbow's doing, not yours.
- From here, throw him to the ground.
- The stated purpose is unusual: "so that you make war neither on me nor on anyone else." The throw is to end him as a threat, not to win the exchange.
- Or, per the verse: he is uncovered, so strike him instead.
The same elbow-turn as [11] and [12], taken to a third destination — behind ([11]), the throat ([12]), the ground ([14]). Push the elbow and the rest is a choice.
This one struck at my head, and I beat aside his sword. I have come to this position (partido). Further, I will make you turn, so as not to have failed, and I will put my sword to your neck, so bold am I.
- He struck at your head.
- Beat his sword aside (rebatei) — the Master's own answer from [Sword1H 2], now in a scholar's hands.
- The beat brings you to this position (partido).
- Turn him — "so as not to have failed". By what, the text does not say; the elbow is the section's handle everywhere else ([11], [12], [14]), but this play does not name it.
- Put your sword to his neck.
The Pisani Dossi gives this plate a different outcome altogether — the player's sword bent or broken, and nothing about a turn or a neck. See the comparison.
the Getty transcription reads "faro volare voltare" — an apparent scribal duplication, translated here as "I will make you turn". The Pisani Dossi couplet gives a different outcome for this play: the player's sword bent or broken rather than the sword put to the neck.
Glossological analysis
- partido ([14], [15]) — here not the grappling's "set piece / agreed play" ([Grappling 14], [Grappling 16]) nor the dagger-vs-sword's wager ([Dagger-Sword 6]), but a position arrived at: "I have come to this partido." Same word, three folios apart, doing different work — the construction (so vegnudo a questo partido) is what forces the reading.
- armado ([4]) — armored; the play's precondition, and the first thing said. Compare [Baton 2], where armor is a reason to prefer a play; here it is a bar to attempting one without it.
- zunta (PD, [4]) — joined (giunta): the left hand joined to the sword. The verse's only technical word on this plate, and the only account anywhere of how the thrust is made.
- rebatei ([15]) — I beat aside: the Master's verb from [Sword1H 2] ([S2H 3]), reappearing in the last play of the section. The scholar closes by doing exactly what the Master opened with.
- cubito ([14]) — the elbow: the handle this section reaches for again and again ([11], [12], [14]), and the same one the dagger Master uses against a swordsman ([Dagger-Sword 3], [Dagger-Sword 4]) and the dagger's counters use against everything ([Dagger 88], [Dagger 94]).
- ardito ([15]) — bold: "so bold am I" (tanto son io ardito). The root is ardimento — audacity, the lion, one of the four virtues of the segno (Glossary). The scholar closes the section by claiming a virtue by name.
- piegada / rota (PD, [15]) — bent / broken, of the player's sword: vocabulary the Getty never uses on this plate, and the sign that the two families are describing different events (see below).
Manuscript comparison
- The prose family puts the armored thrust last; the verse family puts it fourth. [4] stands at Getty 21v-c, physically after every other play in the section (20r-c…21v-b), while the Pisani Dossi has it at 13b-a and the Paris at 10v-d — both immediately after the opening plays. The Morgan's [4] is also late (19r-a), but the Morgan's folio order is no evidence here: the same gathering disorder that puts its dagger-vs-sword [7] at 17r-a also puts its dagger-vs-sword plays (18r-d–18v-d) between its sword-in-one-hand plays (17v-a–d and 19r-a). Our concordance follows the verse order; the Getty's own page does not.
- Form at [4]: neither family describes the whole play. The prose gives the condition ("whoever wants to place such a thrust should be armored") and no mechanics, deferring to the picture. The verse gives the mechanics (the left hand joined to the sword) and no condition. The Getty tells you when; the Pisani Dossi tells you how; only the collation tells you both.
- A real divergence at [15]. The Getty finishes with a turn and the sword laid to the neck. The Pisani Dossi describes something else entirely: "either your sword is bent, or it is broken, and with mine I can strike you above and below." No turn, no neck, and the Getty says nothing whatever about the player's sword. The last plate of the section is two different plays. (Flagged in Sword in One Hand translation.)
- A scribal duplication at [15]. The Getty reads "ti faro volare voltare" — "I will make you fly turn": the scribe wrote volare, corrected to voltare, and struck neither. Translated to the sense.
- The Paris has given out. It carries [4] but neither [14] nor [15]; the Latin stops after [Sword1H 12], so the section's last three plays ([13], [14], [15]) stand on the Getty and Pisani Dossi alone — which is precisely where the two of them disagree most.
- Illustrations. [4] shows the Morgan's figure (19r-a) — the only Morgan illustration in the section — beside the Pisani Dossi's (13b-a), letting the two prose-family and verse-family renderings of the armored thrust be compared directly. [14] and [15] are the Pisani Dossi's (14b-c, 14b-d). No Getty figures.