Getty 27v
The wide play closes on a deception and its answer: [45] is the false thrust, which sells a cut and delivers a point, and [46] is the counter — the same turn, made against it. [47] is Fiore's own closing rubric for the whole run.
One plate, no figure: the fourth column of a page whose first three end the wide play ([S2H 45]–[S2H 47]). It is the section's table of contents — it lists the seven things the close play consists of and promises remedies and counters for all of them, then hands over to 28r for the plays themselves.
This play is called the false thrust (punta falsa) and the short thrust (punta curta), and I shall tell how I do it. I make a show of coming with great force to strike the player with a middle blow to the head; and as soon as he makes the cover, I strike his sword lightly, and immediately turn my sword to the other side, gripping my sword with my left hand almost at the middle; and I plant the point at once in his throat or in his chest. And this play is better in armor than without.
- The play has two names, and Fiore gives both: the false thrust (punta falsa) and the short thrust (punta curta).
- Make a show of coming with great force to strike him with a middle blow to the head — a mezano ([S2H 10]) — and the show has to be convincing: great force.
- As soon as he makes the cover — the feint has done its whole job the moment he answers it:
- Strike his sword lightly. Not a beat. The touch is only enough to feel him and to occupy his blade.
- Immediately turn your sword to the other side (volto la spada mia del'altra parte).
- Grip your sword with the left hand almost at the middle — half-sword, mid-technique: the grip changes inside the action.
- Plant the point at once in his throat or his chest.
- Fiore's own assessment, unprompted: this play is better in armor than without.
The most complete deception in the section, because it lies twice: about the force (great, then light) and about the line (head, then throat). And note the last step — Fiore rates his own play, and rates it down for the unarmored case (Tactical grouping §10).
This is the counter to the play before me, that is, to the false thrust or short thrust. And this counter is done in this way: when the scholar strikes on my sword, in the turn that he gives to his sword, I immediately give a turn to mine in the same way that he turns his — except that I pass across on the traverse, to find the companion more uncovered. And so I plant my point in his face. And this counter is good in armor and without.
- The counter to [S2H 45], and it begins at the moment the scholar's play starts to work:
- when he strikes on my sword — the light touch of [S2H 45] —
- and gives the turn to his sword:
- immediately give a turn to mine, in the same way that he turns his. The counter is the play, copied.
- Except for one difference, and it is the whole counter: I pass across on the traverse (passo ala traversa),
- to find the companion more uncovered.
- Plant the point in his face.
- And its assessment: good in armor and without — where the play it answers was good only in armor.
The purest instance of Fiore's counter-logic: do not answer the action — do the same action, one step wider. And note the ratings. The counter is good in both cases; the play it counters is good in one. Fiore has quietly told you which side of this exchange to be on.
Here ends the wide play of the sword in two hands. These are unified plays which have their plays — that is, remedies and counters — from the forehand side and from the backhand side, and against thrusts and against cuts of every kind, with breaks, covers, strikes, and locks (ligadure); all of which things can be understood most easily.
## Close Plays
- Not a play: the closing rubric of the wide play.
- What Fiore says he has given: unified plays (zoghi uniti) — one body of material, not a list.
- Each of them has its own plays — meaning, he explains, remedies and counters.
- And each works from both sides: the forehand side and the backhand side.
- And against both attacks: thrusts and cuts, of every kind.
- With the four things the wide play has actually used: breaks (roture), covers, strikes, and locks (ligadure).
- His closing claim: all of which can be understood most easily.
A completeness argument. The rubric asserts that the plays just given are not a sample but a closed set — every side, every attack, every answer — which is why the next page can simply begin the close play without apology. And note the last word: having spent twenty-two plates on it, Fiore says it is easy.
Here begins the close play (zogho stretto) of the sword in two hands, in which there will be covers of every kind, and strikes, and locks (ligadure), and dislocations (dislogadure), and holds (prese), and takings of the sword (tore de spade), and throwings to the ground in various ways. And there will be the remedies and the counters of every kind that are needed for offense and for defense.
- This is a rubric, not a play — no figure, no scholar, no action. Its whole content is an announcement of what is coming.
- What Fiore says the close play will contain, in his order: covers of every kind; strikes; locks (ligadure); dislocations (dislogadure); holds (prese); takings of the sword (tore de spade); and throwings to the ground in various ways.
- And over all of it: remedies and counters of every kind, for offense and for defense.
- Note what the list does not contain: no measure, no distance, no account of where the swords meet. The close play is defined here by what it does, not by where it happens.
Set this list beside the one that closes the wide play four columns earlier ([S2H 47]: breaks, covers, strikes, locks). The close play keeps covers, strikes and locks, drops breaks, and adds four things the wide play never named — dislocations, holds, takings of the sword, and throws. Three of those four are the working vocabulary of [Grappling].
Glossological analysis
- punta falsa / punta curta ([45]) — the false thrust / the short thrust: two names for one play. Falsa = deceptive (cf. falsita at [S2H 17], falso taglio at [S2H 10]); curta = short, because the shifted grip shortens the sword into the thrust. One name describes the lie, the other the mechanism.
- mostro de venire ([45]) — "I make a show of coming". Mostrare is to show, to display: the feint is described as a performance given to an audience of one, and the text tells you to play it with granda forza.
- colpo mezano ([45]) — the middle blow of [S2H 10], and it is the specific blow being faked. The taxonomy on folio 23r is not ornamental — a deception has to imitate a named blow to be legible enough to draw a cover.
- lizera mente ([45]) — "lightly". Set against the granda forza three lines above it: the play's entire deception is the gap between the force advertised and the force delivered.
- ala traversa ([46]) — across on the traverse, as at [S2H 14] and [S2H 33]. The counter differs from the play it counters by this one phrase.
- zoghi uniti ([47]) — unified plays: not "joined together" but forming one thing. Fiore's claim that the wide play is a single system with internal completeness, not an anthology.
- rimedii e contrarii ([47]) — remedies and counters, the pedagogical spine named here for the whole section (see fiore - system). The rubric's structure — remedy, counter, both sides, both attacks — is the book's grammar compressed into one sentence.
- de zaschuna rasone ([47]) — "of every kind": rasone in its second sense again (cf. [S2H 11], "thrusts of five rasone"), not "reason". It recurs twice more in the close-play rubric that follows immediately ([S2H 48]).
- zogho stretto ([48]) — the close play: stretto = narrow, tight, constrained — not "stretched". Named against the wide play (zogho largo, [S2H 27]) that ends on this same page. Fiore also uses the adverbial form ale strette, "to the close" ([S2H 12], [S2H 54], [S2H 62]).
- ligadure ([48]) — locks, lit. "bindings". The middle one (ligadura mezana) is the only member named in this section, at [S2H 64] and [S2H 69].
- dislogadure ([48]) — dislocations, joint-displacements. Paired with locks at [Grappling 3] and [Grappling 5]; this is the first time the sword names them.
- prese ([48]) — holds; singular presa. The governing term of the grappling section ([Grappling 1]) borrowed wholesale.
- tore de spade ([48]) — takings of the sword, i.e. disarms. Delivered at [S2H 75], [S2H 77], [S2H 78], [S2H 79] — and countered, or claimed to be, at [S2H 62], [S2H 66], [S2H 68].
- remedies and counters ([48]) — the two answering grades of Fiore's system: the remedy answers the attack, the counter answers the remedy. Promised here "of every kind" — a promise the section does not quite keep (see [S2H 61], [S2H 63], [S2H 65], which have no counter at all).
Manuscript comparison
- [47] is the Getty's alone. The closing rubric of the wide play — the completeness claim, the naming of remedies and counters, the inventory of what the section contained — has no verse and no Morgan text. The Getty is the only witness that tells you the wide play has ended, and the only one that says what it was.
- Coverage thins to a point. The Paris carries only [45]; the Morgan carries none of the three. So the section's final deception is transmitted by three witnesses, its refutation ([46]) by two, and its summary ([47]) by one.
- A real divergence at [45]. The Getty's false thrust feints a middle blow to the head and lands in the throat or chest. The Pisani Dossi describes a different geometry: "I made a show of coming from the right; I entered on the backhand side" — sides, not a named blow. The Paris follows the Pisani Dossi exactly ("from the right side I slipped into the oblique side"). The prose fakes a blow; the verse fakes a side.
- The verse cross-links its deceptions; the prose keeps them apart. The Pisani Dossi's [45] calls the play cruel "in the exchanging (schambiar) of the sword's point" — reaching for the vocabulary of [S2H 37]. And its [37] had already called the exchange of thrusts "the falsest (piu falssa) thrust in the art" — reaching the other way. The verse family binds its two point-deceptions by trading their names; the Getty keeps scambiar and punta falsa strictly separate, as two plays with two Masters.
- Illustrations. [45] shows the Paris figure (28v-c) beside the Pisani Dossi's — one of only two places in this section where the Latin manuscript's own illustration is reproduced (the other is [S2H 24]). [46] is the Pisani Dossi's; [47], like [26], is a text-only rubric with no illustration in any witness.
- Only the prose family has a rubric. The Getty (27v-d) and the Morgan (16r-t) carry it; the Pisani Dossi and the Paris have nothing here and run straight out of the wide play's last couplet into the close play's first. The prose family announces its divisions; the verse family simply changes subject.
- The Morgan restores the breaks. After "close play" it adds a clause the Getty lacks: "and the way to break all thrusts and cuts" (e'l modo de rompe tute punte e tagli) — putting back the roture that the Getty names at [S2H 26] and [S2H 47] but drops from this list.
- The section boundary falls inside a page. Getty 27v carries the end of the wide play in columns a–c and this rubric in column d. There is no clean codicological break between the two halves of the sword — which is why this folio appears twice in the summary below.
- The Morgan's leaves run against the Getty's order. The Morgan's rubric sits on 16r, but its 15r–15v carry plays the Getty places at the very end of the section ([S2H 75]–[S2H 79], [S2H 54]–[S2H 56]). In the Morgan's own foliation the takings of the sword therefore stand a full leaf before the rubric that announces them. Whether that is a transposed bifolium or a different intended order, no witness says — but it holds across every folio below.
- No illustration in any witness.