Born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's tales of mystery and horror initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. With his short stories and poems, Edgar Allan Poe captured the imagination and interest of readers around the world. He was called the "Father of the Detective Story" because of his creative talents. Poe never really knew his parents; his father left the family early on, and his mother passed away when he was only three. Separated from his siblings, Poe went to live with John and Frances Allan, a successful tobacco merchant and his wife, in Richmond, Virginia. He and Frances seemed to form a bond, but he never quite got along with John. Preferring poetry over profits, Poe reportedly wrote poems on the back of some of Allan's business papers.Money was also an issue between Poe and John Allan. When Poe went to the University of Virginia in 1826, he didn't receive enough funds from Allan to cover all his costs. Poe turned to gambling to cover the difference, but ended up in debt. He returned home only to face another personal setback—his neighbor and fiancée Elmira Royster had become engaged to someone else.
A terrifying disease called the Red Death ravages the dominion of Prince Prospero. So lethal is it that it kills within a half-hour after the onset of its symptoms: sharp pain, dizziness, and bleeding from the pores.
.However, the prince is safe and happy in an abbey to which he has withdrawn with a thousand knights and ladies selected from his court. The abbey, which resembles a great castle, is surrounded by a sturdy wall. Its iron gate has been welded shut, making it impossible for anyone to enter or leave.
Inside, the prince has stocked food and drink aplenty and maintains companies of musicians, dancers, and clowns for entertainment. After about six months, while the disease was taking its toll outside, the prince held a masked ball in a maze-like suite of seven rooms specially decorated according to a theme color. One room was blue; the second, purple; the third, green; the fourth, orange; the fifth, white; and the sixth, violet. A stained-glass window in the wall between each of these rooms and the outside corridor matched the color of the room. The seventh room was hung with tapestries of black velvet. However, here the stained-glass between the room and the corridor was scarlet instead of black.
In Renaissance Europe, a masque was an elaborate entertainment featuring participants wearing costumes and masks. They sang, danced, recited poetry, and sometimes participated in a dramatic presentation. A masque could also consist only of a procession or pageant of costumed persons–or simply the kind of costume ball staged by Prince Prospero in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Of course, in Poe’s story, masque not only refers to Prospero’s ball but also to the disguise (mask) of the Red Death. One may also argue that it refers to an entertainment staged by Death, for it was he who drove Prospero and his friends into the abbey–a grand stage where, he knew, they would seek to put him out of mind with a divertissement. In short, Death had a ball.
Poe’s fictional red death resembles a real disease that occurred in Medieval and Renaissance Europe–septicemic plague. Within hours after infecting a person, this deadliest form of plague caused high fever and turned the skin purple. A victim of septicemic plague sometimes got up in the morning hale and healthy, without an ache or a pain, and went to bed in a grave. Plague was spread from rats to humans by fleas. The disease manifested itself in three forms: bubonic plague, which caused painful swellings (buboes) in the lymph nodes of the armpits and groin; pneumonic plague, which filled the lungs with fluid; and septicemic plague, which poisoned the bloodstream. Septicemic plague was far less common than the other two forms of the disease. Sometimes one form of the disease killed by itself; at other times, it progressed into another of the forms before claiming a victim. Together, these three manifestations of plague were known as the Black Death because of the livid hue of corpses caused by subcutaneous hemorrhaging. Black, of course, is the color of the seventh room in “The Masque of the Red Death.”
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