II.i.214 (252,5) [It is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person] That is, _It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself_. _Base, tho bitter_. I do not understand how _base_ and _bitter_ are inconsistent, or why what is _bitter_ should not be _base_. I believe, we may safely read, _It is the base_, the _bitter_ disposition. II.i.253 (253,8) [such impossible conveyance] [W: impassible] I know not what to propose. _Impossible_ seems to have no meaning here, and for _impassible_ I have not found any authority. Spenser uses the word _importable_ in a sense very congruous to this passage, for _insupportable_, or _not to be sustained_. _Both him charge on either side, With hideous strokes and_ importable _power, Which forced him his ground to traverse wide_. It may be easily imagined, that the transcribers would change a word so unusual, into that word most like it, which they could readily find. It must be however confessed, that _importable_ appears harsh to our ears, and I wish a happier critick may find a better word. Sir Tho. Hammer reads _impetuous_, which will serve the purpose well enough, but is not likely to have been changed to _impossible_. _Importable_ was a word not peculiar to Spenser, but used by the last translators of the Apocrypha, and therefore such a word as Shakespeare may be supposed to have written. (1773) II.i.330 (256,2) [Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd] What is it, _to go the world_? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state: but why is the unmarry'd lady _sun-burnt_? I believe we should read, _Thus goes every one to the wood_ but I, and I am sun-burnt_. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and _sun. The nearest way to the_ wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the _wood_, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakespeare, in All's well that Ends well, uses the phrase, _to go to the world_, for _marriage_. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of _wood_ to _sun-burnt_. II.i.380 (258,4) [to bring signior Benedick, and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with another] _A mountain of affection with one another_ is a strange expression, yet I know not well how to change it. Perhaps it was originally written, _to bring Benedick into a mooting of affection_; to bring them not to any more _mootings_ of contention, but to a _mooting_ or conversation of love. This reading is confirmed by the preposition _with; a mountain with each other,_ or _affection with each other,_ cannot be used, but _a mooting with each other_ is proper and regular.