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Pisani Dossi 23a (no Getty text)
The counter to the middle taking of the sword
One plate, in the two verse witnesses only, carrying the section's most specific counter-claim: not a counter to the takings of the sword in general, but to the middle one ([S2H 77]) by name.
[66] Hand shut in with the sword; counter to the middle taking
Paris · 28v-a
Illustrations: Paris 28v-a; Pisani Dossi 23a-d · Text: Pisani Dossi 23a-d · Paris 28v-a
Pisani Dossi · verse translation
I have shut in your hand with my sword,
and I will deal you a bargain (derada) of many wounds to the head;
and I make the counter to the middle taking of the sword:
I have made this lock, and it counts for much.
Flow of actions
- Shut in his hand with your sword — hand and blade trapped together. Neither witness says how; the Paris confirms only the target, "with my sword I have shut in your palm" (ense meo clausi palmam).
- Deal him a bargain (derada) of many wounds — the Paris localizes them: "upon the crown of your head".
- The claim: this is the counter to the middle taking of the sword — i.e. to [S2H 77].
- A second claim, in the Paris only: the bind (nexio) "prevails very greatly, since it furnishes very many deeds" — a lock that generates plays, not a lock that ends one.
Glossological analysis
- "the middle taking of the sword" ([66]) — the disarm delivered at [S2H 77] (mezano tor de spada). This plate is its designated counter — and the specificity is the point: [S2H 62], [S2H 64], [S2H 67] and [S2H 68] all claim to counter "the taking of the sword" with no member named.
- derada ([66]) — the bargain; see [S2H 68], [S2H 75]. Note that the Paris does not translate the idiom, it unpacks it: "you will suffer many wounds upon the crown of your head". The Latin has no equivalent sarcasm and gives the literal content instead.
- nexio (Paris, [66]) — the bind, the knot; the Latin's word for what the Italian calls a ligadura. The Paris grades it by yield — it "furnishes very many deeds" — which is an evaluative register the Italian couplet does not have.
- palma (Paris, [66]) — the palm, where the Pisani Dossi has the hand. The Latin is anatomically narrower, as it is at [Grappling 13].
- shutting in the hand together with the sword ([66]) — the close play's characteristic object once more: at [S2H 63] and [S2H 67] the arms are shut in with the sword, here the hand is. What gets bound is never the weapon or the man alone, but the two as one.
Manuscript comparison
- No prose witness. The Pisani Dossi (23a-d) and the Paris (28v-a) carry the plate; the Getty and the Morgan do not. As at [S2H 58]–[S2H 60], the counter's mechanics go unstated in every witness that has it.
- Four lines each, but not the same four. Both name the shutting-in, the wounds, and the counter to the middle taking. The Pisani Dossi then closes with a boast — "I have made this lock, and it counts for much"; the Paris with an assessment — "this bind prevails very greatly, since it furnishes very many deeds". The Latin habitually converts the Italian's swagger into a judgement about the play's yield.
- A counter with no attested target in its own family. [S2H 66] counters the middle taking, [S2H 77] — which the Pisani Dossi does carry (24a-c). But the middle taking's distinguishing feature, the thing that separates it from the high, is stated only in the Morgan (see 30v below). The verse family carries the counter to a play whose mechanics only the prose family records.
- Illustrations. The Paris's figure (28v-a) and the Pisani Dossi's (23a-d) are shown side by side — one of the few plates in the section where the two verse witnesses' images can be set against each other with no prose family present at all.