The story takes place during a plague where Prince Prospero calls his friends together to come to his castle to have fun until the plague has passed.
Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of ...
Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley, 1894–1895
Prince Prospero flees the Red Death. The Masque of...During the plague Prince Prospero has his friends come with him to his castle until the plague has ended. A masquerade is planned and in the usual Poesque style, the large halls are described in imagery that foreshadows the horror that follows. The ball night arrives and the guests arrive in their costumes and the festivities begin. The fun is stopped by the arrival of a guest who was dressed in the garments with the scarlet blood associated with the plague of "red death." The visitor walks the halls until is met up by the host in the black hall. Without explanation the host falls dead at the visitor's feet revelers, they find that the costume is "untenanted by any tangible form". The rest of the guests begin to die in their tracks as they acknowledge the presence of the Red Death.
The problem of the story was that there was a plague and they were trying to escape it by going to the Prince's castle.
The people at the masquerade end up dying from the red death.
"The Masque of the Red Death" (Page: 82)
The opening of the essay is redundant. It fails to convey the horror of the Red Death as a disease that strikes quickly and without mercy. It fails to convey the setting, with which Poe prepares for the horror that he unveils. It fails to convey Prospero's rage as the figure of the Red Death appears at his ball. It fails to convey the swelling of the story as the ghostlike figure walks down the succession of rooms, heading toward the black-and-red room in which the terrible climax will occur.
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