Sword vs Spear

One Getty folio and one Morgan folio, 3 plates, 4 illustrations. This is the smallest section in the corpus, and the only one where the base text and the verse witness never once meet: the Getty has [1]–[2], the Pisani Dossi has [3], and the Paris has nothing whatsoever. What every version agrees on is a single posture and a single answer — await in the Boar's Tooth, take them one at a time, advance the front foot off the line, cross with the rear, and beat — and the Getty writes it in very nearly the words it uses for the ghiavarina Master at [Spear-Other 17]. The section is not a curriculum but a demonstration: the low awaiting guard does not care what is thrown at it, or by how many.

The disagreements all sit in the margins, and each is instructive. The two prose copies name different substitute guards (Getty: Woman's Guard and Window Guard on the left; Morgan: the Long Tail), agreeing that the guard is interchangeable and never agreeing on what to interchange it for. The Pisani Dossi puts two masters where the prose has one, and the illustrations follow the verse rather than the base text. The verse alone says where the fight goes afterward — to the close, with cuts and thrusts — where the Getty promises an offense and never delivers one. And the Morgan alone finishes the thought the Getty leaves half-made: a thrown spear has a shaft behind its head, and the beat must come twice.