Getty 25r
The wide play opens. [26] is the sword speaking in its own voice — an emblem, not a play — and then [27] gives the first Master of the wide play, crossed at the points, with his scholar completing him at [28]. Everything from here to [S2H 47] descends from that one crossing.
I am the sword, deadly against every weapon: neither lance nor poleaxe nor dagger avails against me. Long or short I can make myself; and I press in and come to the close play (zogho stretto), and I come to the taking of the sword (tor de spada) and to grappling. My art is breaks (roture) and locks (ligadure); I know well how to make covers and strikes, and in those I always want to finish. Whoever works against me, I shall surely make him languish. And I am royal, and I uphold justice: I increase goodness and destroy malice. Whoever shall look to me, making the cross upon me — in deeds of arms I shall give him fame and renown.
- Not a play: the sword speaks, and what it recites is the syllabus.
- Its claim against other weapons: deadly against every one — neither lance, nor poleaxe, nor dagger avails.
- Its claim about itself: long or short I can make myself — the same blade is two weapons, according to the hold ([S2H 4], [S2H 5]).
- Its itinerary, which is the book's own table of contents: press in → the close play (zogho stretto) → the taking of the sword (tor de spada) → grappling.
- Its art, named: breaks (roture) and locks (ligadure) — the grappling section's finishers, claimed by the sword as its own.
- Its method: covers and strikes, "and in those I always want to finish".
- Then the register changes entirely. It is royal; it upholds justice; it increases goodness and destroys malice; and it promises fame and renown to whoever looks to it and makes the cross upon it.
Two claims in one plate, and they are not the same kind of claim. The first is the one-art thesis stated by the weapon itself — the sword ends in grappling, therefore the sword is grappling (Tactical grouping §11; cf. the Iron Gate making the identical argument from the other end at [Grappling 4]). The second turns the cruciform blade into a devotional object. Fiore sets them down side by side and does not reconcile them.
Here begins the play of the sword in two hands, the wide play (zogho largo). This Master, who is here crossed with this player at the point of the sword (in punta de spada), says: when I am crossed at the point of the sword, I immediately give a turn to my sword, and I strike him from the other side with the descending blow, down at the head and at the arms; or else I plant a thrust in his face, as you will see depicted hereafter.
- The rubric: here begins the wide play (zogho largo) of the sword in two hands.
- The state, which is the whole point: the Master is crossed with the player at the point of the sword (in punta de spada) — the far end of the blades, where there is still room.
- From that crossing, immediately:
- Give a turn to your sword (do volta ala mia spada) — the volta of [S2H 1], now doing the work of a technique.
- And strike him from the other side with the descending blow, down at the head and the arms.
- Or — the alternative, named here and demonstrated at [S2H 28]: plant a thrust in his face.
The branch point of the entire section. Crossed at the points there is leverage room, so the answer is made with the sword ([S2H 27]–[S2H 47]); crossed close there is not, and the answer is made with the body ([S2H 49] onward). See Tactical grouping §3.
I have planted a thrust in your face, as the Master before me says. Also, I could have done what he said: that is, having struck with my sword immediately when I was close to the crossing on the right side, I should have turned my sword to the other side — that is, to the left — into the descending blow at the head and at the arms, as my Master before me has said.
- The scholar has taken the second of his Master's two options: the thrust is planted in the face ([S2H 27]).
- He then talks through the option he did not take — and in doing so supplies the mechanic the Master compressed:
- having struck close to the crossing, on the right side,
- turn the sword to the other side — that is, to the left —
- into the descending blow at the head and the arms.
- Both roads run from the same crossing; the scholar's point is that they are interchangeable, not sequential.
Note what the scholar adds. The Master said "the other side"; the scholar names the sides — right, then left. The scholar plates in this section are routinely where the geometry gets specified.
Glossological analysis
- zogho largo ([27]) — the wide play: largo = wide, broad — the fighters are still at a relation where the sword can work. Its opposite is stretto ([S2H 48]). The pair name states of a crossing, not distances measured in the abstract (Technical grouping §3).
- in punta de spada ([27]) — at the point of the sword: crossed near the tips. Set against a meza spada, at the middle ([S2H 29]) — the two crossings that sort the whole section.
- dare volta ala spada ([27], [28]) — to give a turn to the sword: the volta of [S2H 1] applied to the blade. The sword goes over to the other side of his without leaving the bind. It is the section's most-used verb, and it drives the false thrust ([S2H 45]) and its counter ([S2H 46]) alike.
- tor de spada ([26]) — the taking of the sword, a disarm. Announced here; delivered at [S2H 75]–[S2H 79].
- roture / ligadure ([26]) — breaks / locks, imported wholesale from grappling ([Grappling 3], [Grappling 5]) and claimed by the sword as "my art". The vocabulary does not change when the weapon does; that is the plate's argument.
- fatto de armizare ([26]) — deeds of arms: the martial life as a whole, not a single fight. (Note the Getty spells it armizare with a z here, though Manuscript comparison §4B marks the Getty as the ç-heavy witness — the orthographic split is a tendency, not a rule.)
- fazendo in me crose ([26]) — "making the cross upon me". The sword is cruciform, and the plate turns that shape into a devotional claim. The section's own word for blade-crossing is a different one (incrosar, [S2H 18], [S2H 27]) — the pun is in the object, not the vocabulary.
Manuscript comparison
- [26] is the Getty's alone. The sword's speech — the one-art thesis, the itinerary through close play to grappling, the devotional turn — exists in no other witness: no verse, no Morgan text, no Paris. As with [S2H 1], one of the section's most-quoted pieces of doctrine rests on a single page of a single manuscript.
- The Morgan opens the wide play with a rubric the Getty lacks. At [27] the Morgan prefaces: "Here begins the wide play of the sword in two hands, with little crossing (cum pocho incrosare); the honor will be his who best knows how to do it." That is a definition the Getty never gives — the Morgan tells you what makes a play wide (the blades barely meet), where the Getty tells you only where (at the points). The two prose copies are otherwise substantially identical here.
- The verse has already made the Master's choice for him. The Getty's Master at [27] offers two finishes: the fendente from the other side, or the thrust to the face. The Pisani Dossi and the Paris carry only the thrust ("from the other side I have fixed my point in your chest") — and at [28] the verse puts it in the throat where the prose says the face. The verse transmits one line of play; the prose transmits the branch.
- Register at [28]. The Paris takes the Pisani Dossi's "in your throat I have quickly planted the point" and gives it as "the raging point of the blade goes to the dripping throat" — the same heightening the Latin performs throughout (Manuscript comparison §5).
- Illustrations. [27] is the Getty's figure (25r-c); [28] is the Pisani Dossi's (19b-b). [26] has no illustration in any witness — it is a text-only plate (25r-t), a rubric running across the top of the page.