About this audiobook
This is the full text of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death (1842), read aloud word for word in about 15 minutes. The video highlights each word as it is spoken, so you can follow the original wording, and adds a who’s-who, five hard words and a short recap after each of 3 parts. The narration is a synthetic voice (Kokoro text-to-speech). The text comes from the public-domain Project Gutenberg edition, ebook 2148, and nothing is cut.
Who is who
Prince Prospero: The ruler who shuts himself and a thousand friends inside a walled abbey. The Red Death: A deadly plague that kills within half an hour and marks its victims with blood. The masked stranger: A tall figure who appears at midnight, dressed as a corpse marked with blood.
Five hard words
- Pestilence: A deadly disease that spreads widely.
- Egress: A way out.
- Mummer: A person in a mask or disguise.
- Cerements: The cloth wrappings of a dead body.
- Illimitable: Without any limit.
What happens: The abbey
The Red Death is a plague that kills in half an hour and stains its victims with blood. Prince Prospero takes a thousand friends into a walled abbey with iron gates and welds the bolts shut, so that nobody can get in or out. They have food, wine and entertainers, and they plan to ignore the sickness outside. After five or six months, he throws a masked ball.
What happens: The seven rooms
The ball fills seven rooms, each in its own color, from blue at one end to black with scarlet windows at the other. Almost nobody goes into the black room, where a giant ebony clock stands. Every time it strikes the hour, the music stops, the dancers freeze and the boldest guests turn pale, until the laughter comes back.
What happens: Midnight
At midnight, as the clock strikes twelve, the guests notice a tall masked figure dressed as a corpse, with blood on his clothes and face. Prospero, furious, orders him seized, but nobody dares touch him, and he walks through all six rooms to the black one. Prospero chases him with a dagger, the figure turns, and the prince falls dead. The guests grab the figure and find only empty grave clothes. One by one they die, the clock stops, and the Red Death rules over everything.
A note on the story
The clock is the one thing the story never explains, so listen for how the guests react each time it strikes.
