ABSTRACT
John Monck Mason (1726-1809) was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and sat in the Irish House of Commons for much of the time between 1761 and 1798, holding various government offices. He published a four-volume edition of Massinger in 1779 (an undistinguished piece of editing), and had planned to produce an edition of Shakespeare, only to find that the Johnson-Steevens-Reed edition of 1785 included most of his ‘amendments and explanations’. So he issued his Comments separately, and reissued them as Comments on the Several Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, extended to those of Malone and Steevens (Dublin, 1807); he also published Comments on the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher; with an Appendix containing some further Observations on Shakespeare (1798).
