The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death is a short story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1842.

The Red Death kills quickly and disgustingly, and it is everywhere in the kingdom except inside the abbey, where Prospero and his court have shut themselves in with their provisions and their entertainments. The story then describes the masked ball: seven rooms running in a line, each one furnished and lit in its own colour, with the seventh hung in black and lit by a fire that makes it hard to look at, and a clock in that room whose hourly chime is loud enough to stop the music. Poe gives the rooms a shape and a direction, so that the reader understands what the guests are walking through before anything happens. A figure appears in a costume dressed as a victim of the disease, and Prospero's anger at the insult is the last decision he makes.

The story is among Poe's most regularly taught works, and the rooms, the clock and the uninvited guest have been read in many different ways since it appeared.