Getty 29r
The folio of the free left hand: everything here turns on what it does to the player's sword — seize the blade ([S2H 56]), seize the pommel ([S2H 61]), or bundle his arms into the middle lock ([S2H 64]–[S2H 65]). [S2H 56] and [S2H 61] are a deliberate pair, one answering a cover on the right and the other a cover on the backhand. It is also the Getty's loneliest page: two of its four plays are unattested anywhere else.
If someone covers on the right side, seize his sword with your left hand in this way, and strike him with the thrust or with the edge. And if you wish, you cut his face or his neck with his own sword, in the manner that is depicted. Moreover, when I have struck you well, I can abandon my own sword and take yours, in the manner of the scholar who is behind me.
- Condition: he covers on the right side.
- With your left hand, seize his sword — the blade, bare-handed, in the manner depicted.
- Strike him with thrust or edge, using your own sword.
- Or: cut his face or his neck with his own sword — the one now in your fist.
- And further: once you have struck him well, abandon your own sword and take his — the scholar behind, [S2H 57].
Steps 4 and 5 are the section's signature inversion: his blade in your bare hand is a weapon you use on him, and at the end you can trade weapons outright and keep only his.
If someone covers on the backhand side, [the scholar] seizes with his left hand the whole pommel of the player's sword and pushes it backward; and with thrust and cut he can strike him well.
- Condition: he covers on the backhand side — the mirror of [S2H 56].
- With your left hand, seize the whole pommel (tutto lu pomo) of his sword. The whole of it: the hand wraps the butt, it does not pinch it.
- Push it backward.
- His sword steered away by its own butt, strike him with thrust and cut.
The shortest text in the close play, and the loneliest: no other witness carries this play at all.
I complete the play of the scholar who is before me, and what he said he would do, I have done: I have bound your arms in the middle lock (ligadura mezana). Your sword is in prison and cannot help you, and with mine I can deal you wounds enough. I can put my sword at your neck without hesitation, and the play that is behind me I can do to you at once.
- This completes what the scholar before ([S2H 63]) said he would do — shut the arms, with the sword in them, under the left arm.
- His arms are bound in the middle lock (ligadura mezana).
- His sword is in prison — Fiore's own word (in prisone) — "and cannot help you". It is not taken; it is held where it can do nothing.
- From the lock, deal him wounds with your own sword.
- Or put your sword at his neck "without hesitation" — the play behind, [S2H 65].
The distinction the plate turns on is worth holding onto: this is not a taking of the sword. His weapon is still in his hands, and that is exactly why it is useless to him.
From the play before, this play is made: when the scholar has struck the player well, keeping the arms with the sword well bound with his left arm, he throws his sword at the player's neck and puts him in this position. If I throw him to the ground, I have completed the play.
- Continue from [S2H 64]: his arms, with his sword, stay bound under your left arm. The lock does not release.
- You have already struck him well.
- Throw your sword at his neck, putting him in the position shown.
- Throw him to the ground — and the play is complete.
Bind, strike, throw: the whole close play in three steps, on one plate.
Glossological analysis
- ligadura mezana ([64]) — the middle lock: middle of the three (upper / middle / lower). Not "average". It is the same lock the dagger produces, and [S2H 69] borrows it back from there by name — the sameness of the name is the argument.
- in prisone ([64]) — "in prison": Fiore's figure for a weapon immobilized but not removed. The distinction against tor di spada is real and load-bearing — his sword is still in his hands, and still cannot help him.
- tutto lu pomo ([61]) — the whole pommel, here a handle to steer by rather than a head to strike with (contrast [S2H 51]–[S2H 52]). The adjective is doing work: the hand wraps the butt entirely, because the play is a push.
- cover on the right / on the backhand ([56], [61]) — the condition that selects between the two plays. Fiore builds the pair by side, not by technique: one idea — the left hand onto his sword — executed from either line.
- punta / taglio ([56], [61]) — point / edge, the two ways of striking, offered as alternatives on both plates.
- "before me" / "behind me" ([56], [64], [65]) — the page-position idiom, and a standing trap: "before me" means the previous plate, "behind me" the next one. It is spatial on the manuscript page, not temporal.
Manuscript comparison
- The Getty is nearly alone here. [S2H 61] and [S2H 65] have no other witness at all — no Morgan, no Italian verse, no Latin. [S2H 64] has only the Pisani Dossi beside it. Only [S2H 56] has a Morgan text, and there the Morgan does not agree.
- A real divergence at [S2H 56]. The Getty's play is a strike: seize his sword with the left hand and cut him, with your blade or with his. The Morgan's (15v-a) is a throw: the scholar seizes the player's sword about the middle of the blade, throws his own sword to the ground, sets the player's own sword at the player's neck gripping the handle between the player's hands, puts his right foot behind the player's right, and throws him down with his own sword. The families share the seizure of the blade and nothing after it. Note, though, that the Morgan's play is the Getty's closing sentence worked out in full — "I can abandon my own sword and take yours" is a gesture at exactly the play the Morgan describes.
- A likely dittography in the Getty at [S2H 61]. The transcribed text reads "pigla cum la sua mane stancha cum la sua man stancha cum tutto lu pomo" — "with his left hand" written twice, in two spellings. Our translation gives it once. Since no other witness carries this play, nothing can arbitrate whether the repetition is the scribe's or the transcription's.
- [S2H 64]'s verse claims a counter the prose does not. The Getty says only that the sword is imprisoned. The Pisani Dossi adds "I am a counterer of the taking of the sword, according as Master Fiore places me" — and adds the armor grading the prose omits ("the play is better armored than unarmored").
- Illustrations, unusually, are Getty-heavy. All four plates reproduce the Getty's own figures (29r-d, -c, -a, -b) — the only folio in the section where that is true. [S2H 61] additionally carries a plate from Cod. 1324, an illustrated witness outside our five collated manuscripts, used where the main copies lack a figure; the same expedient as at [Grappling 7].
- Physical order versus plate order again: the Getty's columns run 29r-a = [S2H 64], -b = [S2H 65], -c = [S2H 61], -d = [S2H 56]. The page itself reads middle-lock first and the hand-seizures last; the concordance reverses it.