October 15, 2025 • 15 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.
The Red Death had long devastated the country. No pestilence
had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was
its avatar and its seal, the redness and the horror
of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and
(00:23):
then profuse bleeding at the pause 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
(00:46):
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 ra tired to
the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This
was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the
(01:08):
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 nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or
(01:29):
of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With
such precautions, the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The
external world would 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 improvisitory there were ballet dancers, there were musicians,
(01:53):
There was beauty, there was wine. All these and security
were within. Without was the red death. It was towards
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 friends at a masked ball
(02:16):
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. These were seven an imperial suite.
In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and
straight vista, while the folding door slide back nearly to
the walls on either hand, so that the view of
(02:37):
the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was
very different, as might have been expected from the Duke's
love of the bazaar. The apartments were so irregularly disposed
that the vision embraced but little more than one at
a time. There was a sharp turn every twenty or
thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect to
(03:00):
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,
(03:21):
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
(03:45):
that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls,
falling into 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 to color. Now,
(04:06):
in no one of these seven apartments was there any
lamp or candelabrum. Amid the profusion of gold 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, a fire that
(04:29):
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 firelight that streamed upon the dark
hangings through the blood tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme,
(04:50):
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.
(05:13):
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 hearken to
(05:36):
the sound. And thus the waltzes 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
(05:59):
had fully ceased, alike 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 embraced three thousand
(06:22):
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 rebel. The tastes of the Duke were peculiar. He
had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded
(06:44):
the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery,
and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. 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.
(07:04):
He had directed in great part the movable embellishments of
the Seven Chambers upon occasion of this grand fate, 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 her Nanni. There were
(07:27):
Arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies,
such as the Madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful,
much of the wanton, much of the bazaar, something of
the terrible, and not a little of that which might
have excited disgust to and fro In the seven chambers
(07:50):
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 echoes 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
(08:15):
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,
(08:38):
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 appalls, And to
(09:00):
him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes
from the near clock of Ebony a muffled peal, more
solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears, who indulged
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 worryingly on,
(09:23):
until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon
the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told,
and the evolutions of the waltzes 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
(09:47):
more of thought crept, with more of time, into the
meditations of the thoughtful among those who reveled. And thus
too it happened, perhaps that before the last echoes of
the last child 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
(10:10):
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 desprobation and surprise, then finally of terror,
of horror, and of disgust. In an assembly of phantasms
(10:34):
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 calls in the hearts of the most reckless, which
(10:56):
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.
(11:17):
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
(11:39):
the mad revelers round. 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 the Prince Prospero
fell upon this spectral image, which, with a slow and
(12:02):
solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its roll,
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 coarsely of
(12:23):
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 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
(12:46):
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 Mamma had inspired the
whole party, there were found none who put forth hand
to seize him, So that, unimpeded, he passed within a
(13:10):
yard of the Prince's person, And while the vast assembly,
as if with one impulse, shrank from the centers 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
(13:33):
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 cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers,
(13:54):
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
(14:18):
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 revelers
at once threw themselves into the Black apartment, and seizing
the Mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within
(14:41):
the shadow of the Ebony Clock, gasped in the unutterable
horror at finding the grave seerments and corpselike 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,
(15:03):
and one by one dropped the revelers 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
(15:24):
darkness and decay, and the Red Death held illimitable dominion
over all. And The Mask of the Red Death by
Edgar Allan Poe
The Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.
The Red Death had long devastated the country. No pestilence
had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was
its avatar and its seal, the redness and the horror
of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and
(00:23):
then profuse bleeding at the pause 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
(00:46):
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 ra tired to
the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This
was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the
(01:08):
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 nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or
(01:29):
of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With
such precautions, the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The
external world would 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 improvisitory there were ballet dancers, there were musicians,
(01:53):
There was beauty, there was wine. All these and security
were within. Without was the red death. It was towards
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 friends at a masked ball
(02:16):
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. These were seven an imperial suite.
In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and
straight vista, while the folding door slide back nearly to
the walls on either hand, so that the view of
(02:37):
the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was
very different, as might have been expected from the Duke's
love of the bazaar. The apartments were so irregularly disposed
that the vision embraced but little more than one at
a time. There was a sharp turn every twenty or
thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect to
(03:00):
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,
(03:21):
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
(03:45):
that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls,
falling into 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 to color. Now,
(04:06):
in no one of these seven apartments was there any
lamp or candelabrum. Amid the profusion of gold 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, a fire that
(04:29):
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 firelight that streamed upon the dark
hangings through the blood tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme,
(04:50):
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.
(05:13):
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 hearken to
(05:36):
the sound. And thus the waltzes 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
(05:59):
had fully ceased, alike 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 embraced three thousand
(06:22):
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 rebel. The tastes of the Duke were peculiar. He
had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded
(06:44):
the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery,
and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. 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.
(07:04):
He had directed in great part the movable embellishments of
the Seven Chambers upon occasion of this grand fate, 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 her Nanni. There were
(07:27):
Arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies,
such as the Madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful,
much of the wanton, much of the bazaar, something of
the terrible, and not a little of that which might
have excited disgust to and fro In the seven chambers
(07:50):
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 echoes 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
(08:15):
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,
(08:38):
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 appalls, And to
(09:00):
him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes
from the near clock of Ebony a muffled peal, more
solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears, who indulged
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 worryingly on,
(09:23):
until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon
the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told,
and the evolutions of the waltzes 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
(09:47):
more of thought crept, with more of time, into the
meditations of the thoughtful among those who reveled. And thus
too it happened, perhaps that before the last echoes of
the last child 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
(10:10):
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 desprobation and surprise, then finally of terror,
of horror, and of disgust. In an assembly of phantasms
(10:34):
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 calls in the hearts of the most reckless, which
(10:56):
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.
(11:17):
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
(11:39):
the mad revelers round. 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 the Prince Prospero
fell upon this spectral image, which, with a slow and
(12:02):
solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its roll,
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 coarsely of
(12:23):
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 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
(12:46):
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 Mamma had inspired the
whole party, there were found none who put forth hand
to seize him, So that, unimpeded, he passed within a
(13:10):
yard of the Prince's person, And while the vast assembly,
as if with one impulse, shrank from the centers 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
(13:33):
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 cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers,
(13:54):
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
(14:18):
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 revelers
at once threw themselves into the Black apartment, and seizing
the Mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within
(14:41):
the shadow of the Ebony Clock, gasped in the unutterable
horror at finding the grave seerments and corpselike 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,
(15:03):
and one by one dropped the revelers 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
(15:24):
darkness and decay, and the Red Death held illimitable dominion
over all. And The Mask of the Red Death by
Edgar Allan Poe
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