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Annotated Text

Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death ” (Text-03b), Broadway Journal (New
York, NY), vol. II, no. 2, July 19, 1845, pp. 17-19

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[page 17, column 1, continued:]

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 Avator [[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 [column 2:] 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 projected
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.

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 harken to the sound; and thus the
waltzers [page 18:] 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 fête; 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 solemly [[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 upou
[[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 [column 2:] 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.

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 róle, stalkod [[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 [page 19:] 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.

EDGAR A. POE.

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Notes:

In the original (second full paragraph on page 18) the accent over fête is broken, so that only a
portion, resembling a dot, appears. In the last full paragraph on same page and column, the ending
quote marks after “Hernani” are given as a single mark, with some attempt to imply a second mark
by the use of a misplaced comman. Near the end of page 18. column 2, the period at the end of the
phrase “had been made to arrest him” appears to be a smaller font hyphen, although a period is
clearly required. In the text above, these three typographical errors have been given as intended.

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[S:1 - BJ, 1845] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Tales - The Masque of the Red Death (Text-03b)