40 Fun Facts About The Masque of the Red Death

In which French novel does the title character crash a masked ball dressed as the Red Death?

The Phantom of the Opera sends Erik to the Paris masquerade as the Red Death, his cloak embroidered in gold with 'I am the Red Death that passes'. Lon Chaney wore the costume in the 1925 silent film.

In The Masque of the Red Death, which color is the seventh and final room, the one guests avoid?

Black is the seventh room, draped from ceiling to carpet and lit so eerily that few guests dare set foot in it. It is also where the great clock stands and where the prince finally dies.

In The Masque of the Red Death, what do the revellers find beneath the intruder's mask and robes?

Only empty air fills the costume: the grave-clothes and mask are 'untenanted by any tangible form'. At that moment the guests understand that the plague itself has been walking among them.

Poe's Prince Prospero shares his name with the exiled sorcerer of which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest centres on Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, who is put to sea by his brother and rules a remote island by sorcery. Poe twice calls his own Prospero 'the duke' as well.

Which horror icon played Prince Prospero in the 1964 film of The Masque of the Red Death?

Vincent Price made the prince a devil-worshipping tyrant, a twist found nowhere in Poe's story. The film was shot in England, partly on sets left over from the historical epic Becket.

When do the guests at Prince Prospero's masked ball first notice the uninvited figure among them?

At midnight the clock needs twelve strokes, and that extra time lets the revellers notice a stranger nobody had seen before. Their murmur moves from surprise to terror, horror and disgust.

In Edgar Allan Poe's tale, how quickly does the Red Death kill a victim once the first pains strike?

Half an hour covers the whole 'seizure, progress and termination' of the disease. Poe says no pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.

Which Stephen King novel keeps repeating a line about the Red Death holding sway over all?

The Shining returns again and again to that line, a reworking of the last sentence of Poe's story. Stephen King's haunted-hotel novel was also shaped by Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.

After sharp pains and sudden dizziness, which symptom marks a victim of Poe's Red Death?

Bleeding from the pores is the plague's signature, and it leaves red stains on the body and especially the face. Those marks shut a victim out from the aid and sympathy of everyone else.

How many friends does Prince Prospero summon to sit out the plague in The Masque of the Red Death?

One thousand 'hale and light-hearted' friends are chosen from his court, while everyone else is left to the plague. By then the disease has already emptied much of his realm.

Which weapon does Prince Prospero hold aloft as he chases the masked intruder through six rooms?

A dagger is all he carries, and it never touches the stranger. He gets within three or four feet before the figure turns round to face him.

The giant clock in the last room of Prince Prospero's suite is made of which dark material?

Ebony is the wood, and the clock stands against the far wall of the one room the guests fear. When the last reveller dies, Poe writes that the life of the clock goes out too.

What happens at Prince Prospero's masked ball each time the great clock strikes?

The musicians stop playing, the dancers freeze, and even the giddiest guests turn pale until the echoes fade. Then laughter returns, and the players promise each other not to be rattled next time, yet always are.

How do Prince Prospero's courtiers make sure nobody can enter or leave their plague refuge?

They weld the bolts of the iron gates with furnaces and heavy hammers carried in for the job. The idea is to keep anyone inside from acting on a sudden impulse of despair or frenzy.

In The Masque of the Red Death, what kind of building does Prince Prospero seal his court inside?

A fortified abbey is the refuge, 'castellated' in Poe's word and built to the prince's own eccentric taste. It is amply stocked for a long stay, with wine, dancers and buffoons laid on.

In The Masque of the Red Death, the uninvited guest's mask is made to look like the face of what?

A rigid corpse is the model, copied so closely that Poe says the closest scrutiny could barely detect the cheat. The costume adds a burial shroud spattered to mimic the plague's own marks.

Which illness of Poe's wife Virginia may have inspired the plague in The Masque of the Red Death?

Tuberculosis first showed in Virginia in January 1842, months before the story was printed, though Poe said she had merely ruptured a blood vessel. She died of it in 1847.

What color is the glass in the seventh room of Prince Prospero's suite, the only windows that clash?

Scarlet panes break the pattern: in the six other rooms the glass matches the hangings. The light pouring through them makes faces look so wild that few guests will step inside.

The Masque of the Red Death is most often read as which kind of story about the certainty of dying?

An allegory about the inevitability of death is the standard reading, with the sealed gates standing for every attempt to shut dying out. Poe disliked preachy stories, so some critics resist it.

What fate does Prince Prospero promise the masked intruder once he has been seized and unmasked?

Hanging at sunrise from the battlements is the threat, shouted so loudly it rings through all seven rooms. Moments earlier the prince had only shuddered, before his brow reddened with rage.

In which colored room is Prince Prospero standing when he orders the masked intruder seized?

Blue is the first of the seven rooms, at the opposite end of the suite from the one the guests fear. The stranger walks from there through every color in turn, and no hand is raised against him.

In which direction do Prince Prospero's seven rooms run, from the first chamber to the last?

East to west is the line of the suite, the same path the sun takes across the sky. The stranger is first met at the dawn end and makes his stand at the dusk end, beside the clock.

The Red Death arrives 'like a thief in the night', a phrase that echoes which much older book?

The Bible uses the image in Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, where the day of the Lord 'cometh as a thief in the night'. Poe turns a warning about judgment into the plague's quiet entrance.

How does Prince Prospero die when he finally corners the masked figure in the seventh room?

He cries out and collapses the instant the figure turns to face him, with no blow struck by either of them. The guests who rush in afterwards last only a little longer.

Who follows Prince Prospero when he rushes after the masked stranger in The Masque of the Red Death?

No one at all follows, 'on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all'. Only after the prince is dead do the revellers find what Poe calls the wild courage of despair and rush in.

How long has Prince Prospero's court been shut away when he stages the masked ball?

Five or six months have passed inside the walls, and the plague is raging 'most furiously' outside when the prince decides on a masquerade. He directs much of the decor and the costumes himself.

With no lamps or candles inside, what lights the seven rooms at Prince Prospero's masquerade?

Braziers in the corridors stand on tripods outside each stained-glass window, so every room glows in the color of its panes. When the last guest dies, those flames go out as well.

Which director made the 1964 film of The Masque of the Red Death the seventh entry in his Poe cycle?

Roger Corman ranked it with House of Usher as one of the two best Poe stories, yet held off filming for years because it reminded him of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal.

From which group does Prince Prospero pick the friends he shelters in The Masque of the Red Death?

Knights and dames of his own court make the list, picked for being healthy and light-hearted. Outside, in the narrator's cold phrase, 'the external world could take care of itself'.

Which Philadelphia monthly, once edited by Poe himself, first printed The Masque of the Red Death?

Graham's Magazine ran the story in May 1842, just after Poe quit as its editor. It had also been first to print his detective tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Poe says the masked stranger 'out-Heroded Herod', borrowing a phrase from which Shakespeare tragedy?

Hamlet uses it to mock ham actors, complaining that their overacting 'out-Herods Herod'. Herod was a stock character of medieval drama, famous for ranting.

Poe likens the masquerade's glare and glitter to 'Hernani', an 1830 play by which French writer?

Victor Hugo's Hernani is remembered less for its plot than for its premiere, where supporters and opponents of Romanticism clashed in the theatre. Verdi later set the play to music as Ernani.

The 1964 film of The Masque of the Red Death adds a jester's fiery revenge from which Poe tale?

Hop-Frog is a court jester who dresses a cruel king and his ministers as apes, then burns them alive at a masquerade. The film renames him Hop-Toad and gives him a single victim.

Which ballroom dance are Prince Prospero's guests doing when the masked stranger stalks among them?

The waltz is the one ballroom dance Poe names, calling the guests 'waltzers' three times. He never describes the music beyond calling it wild.

Which fabric covers the ceiling, walls and floor of the seventh room in The Masque of the Red Death?

Velvet drapes the ceiling and walls, then falls in heavy folds onto a carpet of the same material. Poe later refers to the whole room simply as 'the hall of the velvet'.

In Poe's last line, which pair shares 'illimitable dominion over all' with the Red Death?

Darkness and Decay take over once the last reveller has dropped, the clock has run down and the lights have gone out. Poe capitalizes both words, as if they were conquerors entering the hall.

When first printed in 1842 as The Mask of the Red Death, Poe's tale carried which two-word tagline?

A Fantasy was the label under a title that pointed at the masked figure. Poe respelled it Masque in 1845, shifting the weight from the intruder to the ball itself.

What does Poe's narrator call the costumed guests who writhe through Prince Prospero's seven rooms?

Dreams is his word: 'there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams', each taking its hue from the room it passed through. The prince's own taste had shaped the costumes, and he wanted them grotesque.

What does Prince Prospero's court dismiss as 'folly' while the plague rages outside the walls?

To grieve or to think was folly, so the prince laid on 'all the appliances of pleasure' instead, from ballet-dancers to wine. The narrator sums it up: security was within, the Red Death without.

Poe's narrator admits that some people would have thought Prince Prospero to be what?

Mad is the word, though his followers 'felt that he was not'. Poe adds drily that it was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure.