The Masque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

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 Table of Contents
Notes.....................................................................................................................................................................1

Reading Pointers for Sharper Insights.............................................................................................................3

The Masque of the Red Death............................................................................................................................4

i
Notes
What is a literary classic and why are these classic works important to the world?

A literary classic is a work of the highest excellence that has something important to say about life and/or the
human condition and says it with great artistry. A classic, through its enduring presence, has withstood the test
of time and is not bound by time, place, or customs. It speaks to us today as forcefully as it spoke to people
one hundred or more years ago, and as forcefully as it will speak to people of future generations. For this
reason, a classic is said to have universality.

Poe's stories and poems are remarkable, not only for an unusual anxiety about life, a preoccupation with loss,
an all-consuming terror, and a unique perspective on death, but also for their rich mixture of beauty, the
sensual, and the supernatural. Many readers wonder whether Poe's odd perspectives were the result of his
unconventional lifestyle, but the debate over whether drugs or alcohol fueled his imagination and caused his
death is inconclusive.

Most modern critics recognize the emotional difficulties that Poe experienced in his life, but they also doubt
that binge drinking and opium use were the inspirations for his fascination with the macabre. It is just as likely
that Poe's series of wrenching losses contributed to a lifelong struggle with depression. His mother and two
other women who served as mother figures to him, died prematurely. His wife was ill for years before she
succumbed to tuberculosis, and a fiancée rejected him.

It is obvious that an artist as sensitive as Poe would reflect this pain in his writings. In addition, it is well
known that he revised his work painstakingly. The hours that Poe spent revising his work also belie any claim
that his work was the product of something other than his own innate genius and craftsmanship.

Poet, storyteller, respected literary critic—Poe was and still remains one of the defining contributors to
American literature. It is our hope that this collection will not only afford you the opportunity to revisit some
of your favorite Poe writings, but also give you the chance to experience a side of his genius that, perhaps,
you never knew existed.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. Both his mother, Elizabeth Arnold
Poe, and his father, David Poe, Jr., were employed as actors in the Boston Theatre. After his father abandoned
the family and his mother's death a year later, Poe was taken in by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan, but they never
adopted him. While they lived in England, Poe and his stepfather began to argue fiercely and frequently. Mrs.
Allan died, John remarried, and he and Poe became even further estranged

In 1826, Poe began attending the University of Virginia, but was expelled later that year. He attended West
Point for a short time; while there, he accumulated some gambling debts. John Allan would not help pay them
and Poe left the Academy. He went to Boston in 1827 and, finding that he could not support himself, enlisted
in the United States Army under the name Edgar A. Perry. After two years, he was released and moved to
Baltimore, Maryland, where his maternal relatives lived. During this period, newspapers and literary
magazines began to be published Poe's work. Tamerlaine and Other Poems appeared in 1827 and Al Aaraaf in
1829. His Manuscript Found in a Bottle won a literary contest in 1833.

Three years later, however, his life would change drastically. In May of 1836, he married his 14-year-old
cousin, Virginia Clemm, who convinced Poe to settle in Philadelphia, where he obtained regular employment
as an editor. In 1844, Poe moved to New York City, taking a job as editor for another literary magazine, The
Evening Mirror. His most famous and popular poem, The Raven, was published in this magazine; through this
one poem, Poe finally achieved his well-deserved reputation as a great writer. In January of 1847, however,

Notes 1
after a long illness, Virginia died of tuberculosis. Poe's grief, combined with the stress caused by years of
caring for his invalid wife, caused him to collapse emotionally after her death; it is believed that this loss
accelerated his drinking problem.

Yet two years later, in 1849, he moved back to Richmond and planned to wed Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, a
woman Poe had been engaged to marry earlier in life. (John Allan had forced Poe to abandon any thoughts of
marrying her because of a lack of money.) Poe and Shelton, both now having lost a spouse, renewed their
relationship. They would, however, not marry due to Poe's untimely death, the circumstances of which remain
a mystery, even today.

He had left Richmond for Baltimore on September 27, 1849, and was found unconscious in a gutter there on
October 3rd. Poe had collected approximately $1,500 for subscriptions to his literary magazine, The Stylus, but
no money was found with him, leading to the speculation that he might have been robbed. He was taken to a
hospital where he regained consciousness a few times, but Poe was never coherent enough to explain what
had happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849.

One doctor reported to the newspapers that Poe died from a “congestion of the brain.” Poe was known to
have a tendency toward binge drinking; this, along with the subject matter of his stories and poems, caused
many contemporaries to speculate that alcohol or drugs played a role in his death, but the truth may never be
known. Some modern critics speculate that he might have been an undiagnosed diabetic. Other theories
include the possibility of a brain lesion. One historian theorizes that Poe was kidnapped, given alcohol,
beaten, and forced to vote time and again for sheriff; this was called “cooping” and was a practice in
Baltimore elections at the time. The possibility also exists that Poe encountered a spurned lover, who
wounded him in the neck. What is certain, however, is that Edgar Allan Poe left behind an enduring legacy of
work that will long outlive the circumstances of his death.

Notes 2
Reading Pointers for Sharper Insights
As you read these stories and poems, pay attention to the following:

Poe's depiction of death:

• Death is not only inevitable, but it also can be beautiful, especially as it is portrayed in the poems.
• Death can be horrific when someone realizes it is imminent.
• Guilt, hatred, or revenge are appropriate justifications for murder.
• Impending death can be postponed, but not always.
• Death may actually enhance a loved one's beauty.

Poe's portrayal of love and beauty, especially in the poems:

• Love is chosen by the individual, not determined merely by fate.

• Love has historical, sometimes mythological, references.
• Love has no boundaries, not even in death.
• Beauty is only an idea, one that even death cannot weaken.
• Beauty in its ideal form cannot be attained.

Poe's innovative and unusual use of words in both genres:

• Words are frequently used for the way they sound, as well as for their meanings.
• Poe's rhythm and internal rhyme becomes almost hypnotic in many poems.
• The difficult vocabulary reflects the style of Poe's time period.
• Every important word is intended to evoke a mood or atmosphere in the reader, and Poe aimed for the
same effect regardless of whether the work was prose or poetry.

Poe's ability to instill fear in the reader, primarily in the short stories:

• Poe builds suspense throughout the stories, revealing some facts while withholding others.
• Because the element of danger is usually present, the reader can feel the intensity of the emotions.
• The narration is frequently first person, which makes the reader's connection to the story more
intimate.
• Poe's descriptions are usually minutely detailed to give a sense of verisimilitude to the stories, despite
their supernatural atmosphere.
• The use of irony and black humor is common.
• Gothic elements are usually prominent in his writing: the supernatural, evil animals, and dark, gloomy
settings
• Poe's depictions of how the human mind works heighten a reader's connection to the story.
• The surprise endings provide a reason to go back through the work to look for clues missed on the
first reading.

Reading Pointers for Sharper Insights 3

The Masque of the Red Death
THE “RED DEATH” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.
Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden
dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and
especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the
sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the
incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated,
he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of
his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive
and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall
girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers
and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of
despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers
might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to
grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were
improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these
and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most
furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most
unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were
seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the
folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely
impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre.
The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There
was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the
middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the
windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the
prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung,
for example, in blue—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and
tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The
fourth was furnished and lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth with violet. The seventh
apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls,
falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the
windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color. Now in
no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments
that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp
or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to
each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass and so
glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in
the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the
blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those
who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

The Masque of the Red Death 4

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its
pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit
of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was
clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of
an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to
hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert
of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew
pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation.
But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at
each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other,
that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty
minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet
another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a
fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and
his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers
felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this
great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were
grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since seen
in “Hernani.” There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious
fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the
bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the
seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these—the dreams—writhed in and about,
taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps.
And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is
still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of
the chime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as
they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than
ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the
chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the
night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of
the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of
ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more
remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel
went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the
music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy
cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and
thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful
among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime
had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become
aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And
the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole
company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and
of disgust.

The Masque of the Red Death 5

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance
could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the
figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite
decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even
with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger
neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the
habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the
countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And
yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone
so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all
the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as
if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first
moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him—“who dares insult us with this
blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise,
from the battlements!”

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang
throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly—for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had
become hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke,
there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also
near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a
certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there
were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's
person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the
walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished
him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple—through the purple to the green—through the green
to the orange—through this again to the white—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been
made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his
own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account
of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid
impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity
of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger
dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince
Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves
into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the
shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask
which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by
one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of
his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods
expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The Masque of the Red Death 6