Getty 29v
The most cross-referential page in the sword: [S2H 69] openly imports a play from the dagger's First Remedy Master, and the folio's last two plates are two different counters to that same import. [S2H 57] belongs to 29r's argument rather than this one — it finishes the blade-seizure of [S2H 56].
From the play of the scholar who is before me I make this play: with his own sword I cut his face, sending him to the ground. Well will I show you that this art is true.
- Continue from the scholar before ([S2H 56]): you have his sword in your left hand.
- Cut his face with his own sword.
- Send him to the ground.
- The plate ends not with an instruction but with a warrant: "Well will I show you that this art is true."
Fiore rarely argues. When he does — here, and at [S2H 52]'s four teeth — it is on the plays that ask you to put your bare hand on a blade.
This play is taken from the play of the dagger — namely from the First Remedy Master: just as he puts his left hand under the dagger to take it from the hand, so in the same way this scholar puts his left hand under the player's right hand to draw the sword from his hand. Or else he will put him in the middle lock (ligadura mezana), like the second play that comes after the First Remedy Master of the dagger spoken of before; and that lock belongs to this scholar.
- The play is declared a loan, and its source is named: the First Remedy Master of the dagger.
- The parallel Fiore draws: just as the dagger's Remedy Master puts his left hand under the dagger to take it from the hand — so here the scholar puts his left hand under the player's right hand, to draw the sword out of it.
- First outcome: the sword comes out of his hand.
- Or, second outcome: put him in the middle lock (ligadura mezana) — "like the second play that comes after the First Remedy Master of the dagger". Fiore then assigns it: "that lock belongs to this scholar."
Doctrine as much as technique. The plate's real content is the claim that the dagger's grammar transfers to the sword unaltered — same hand, same path, a longer weapon in it. It is the sword section's counterpart to [Grappling 4], where the Iron Gate claims that lance, poleaxe, sword and dagger all draw on grappling.
I am the counter, and I act against the scholar who is before me, who wants to do dagger plays — namely the second play of the First Remedy Master, which follows him. That you will stay on your feet with your sword — that I do not believe.
- You are the counter. Your target is the scholar of [S2H 69] — named as such: "who wants to do dagger plays".
- Fiore specifies which dagger play: "the second play of the First Remedy Master" — i.e. [S2H 69]'s second branch, the middle lock, not the disarm.
- The text gives no mechanics whatever. It names the target and states the outcome: "That you will stay on your feet with your sword — that I do not believe."
One of the section's few plates that is pure declaration. The figure has to carry all of it.
Again I am the counter to that scholar who wants to do dagger plays — namely the second play that is before me; against that scholar I make the counter. If I saw his throat, it is no great matter; and I can throw him to the ground — if I wish, I can do it quickly.
- A second counter to the same scholar — "again I am the counter to that scholar who wants to do dagger plays", and again the target is the second play, [S2H 69]'s lock branch.
- Saw his throat (segare la gola) — a drawing cut, not a chop. Fiore's own assessment of it: "it is no great matter".
- Or throw him to the ground — "if I wish, I can do it quickly".
Two counters to one play, on one page, and Fiore states no preference between them. He usually gives a play one counter or none.
Glossological analysis
- the First Remedy Master ([69], [72]) — the dagger's first Remedy Master and the sequence of plays that follows him. The Remedy is the middle grade of Fiore's three (Master/remedy → scholar → counter), and this page's claim is that a remedy's plays are portable between weapons.
- ligadura mezana ([69]) — the middle lock, imported here from the dagger by name. The identity of the name is the whole argument: Fiore does not say it is like the dagger's lock, he says it is it. Cf. [S2H 64], where the same lock arrives from the sword's own side.
- "puts his left hand under…" ([69]) — the hand-under-the-weapon disarm. The mechanic is kept from the dagger and the object changed: under the dagger there, under his right hand here.
- contrario ([72], [73]) — the counter, the third grade. Two on this page, both aimed at the same scholar; a third, at [S2H 70], exists only in the Paris.
- segare ([73]) — to saw, not simply to cut: a drawing action across the throat. The same verb as [S2H 42]'s "to saw through the windpipe of his throat" (per segargli la canna dela gola) — the treatise's technical word for what an edge does when it cannot chop.
- "the second play that is before me" ([73]) — a backward reference, in contrast with [S2H 52]'s "the scholar behind me", which is forward. Both idioms are on this leaf's neighbours; they are not interchangeable.
Manuscript comparison
- No Morgan on this page at all. Not one of the four plates has a Morgan witness. The Morgan's close play has no dagger-import and no counters to it — the borrowing from the First Remedy Master is a Getty-and-Paris affair.
- The Getty and the Paris split the dagger cluster between them. [S2H 69] has a Getty prose text and a Paris couplet — no Pisani Dossi. [S2H 70], the Paris's own counter to that disarm, is Paris-only and the Getty never mentions it. [S2H 73] is Getty-only. Only [S2H 72] has all three of Getty, Pisani Dossi and Paris. Three counters to [S2H 69] exist across the tradition, and no witness carries all three.
- A real divergence of framing at [S2H 72]. The Getty makes it the counter to the dagger-derived plays of [S2H 69]. The Pisani Dossi and Paris both make it the counter to shutting the sword under the arm — which is the middle-lock family of [S2H 63]–[S2H 64], not the dagger import. Same plate, two different things being countered. Flagged in Sword in Two Hands translation. The two framings converge only if [S2H 69]'s second branch — the middle lock — is what the verse means, which is what [S2H 72]'s Getty text itself specifies.
- The Paris's [S2H 69] is voiced from the other side. The Latin says "with your own sword I learn to strike back at your arms" — the speaker using the player's weapon — where the Getty's scholar is drawing that sword out of his hand. The Latin describes the aftermath the Italian describes the entry to.
- Illustrations. [69] and [73] show the Getty's own plates (29v-b, 29v-d); [57] and [72] show the Pisani Dossi (22b-b, 23b-d). The two Getty-illustrated plates are the two the Pisani Dossi does not carry — the illustration column falls back on the Getty exactly where the verse family has nothing.