The red death mask was originally a Venetian legend:
“About the middle of the seventeenth century, there lived in Venice a certain haughty duke, so rich and powerful as to be feared by friend as well as foe; for that was a period of constant murder and assassination; and a mere whim, or unjust superstition, was often sufficient to bring the deadly poison or secret stiletto to bear upon those supposed to be in highest favor.”
In other words, no one was safe from this evil Duke who flaunted his wealth with costly banquets given in the great hall of his beautiful palace. Those who came to these banquets were playing a game with death because the Duke would poison his presumed enemies or anyone he desired to die.
Of course, no one dared to turn down an invitation to a banquet. If they did, an assassin would pay them a visit and put an end to their bad manners.
At these banquets was a figure. Dressed all in red and wearing a red mask, the figure never spoke to anyone. He ate and drank with everyone else and when he was finished, he would shake everyone’s hand and leave.
No one knew who this figure was, but some believed that he was the Duke’s secret prisoner. Other people believed that the man in the red mask was a trained assassin because he wore what looked like a death ring on his finger. The death ring, they said, had a secret spring that, when released, injected a person’s hand with deadly poison. Needless to say, everyone feared the masked stranger.
As time passed on, news came to the cruel Duke that there was a man in town who bore his resemblance. Both angered and intrigued, the Duke invited the lookalike to his palace where he soon learned that the other man was a Count.
The Duke could not bear another man wearing his likeness so he invited the Count to one of his banquets where he planned to poison him, but the Count was warned of the Duke’s plans by no other than the man who bore the red mask.
On the night of the banquet, the man in the red mask shook the Count’s hand and the Count instantly pretended to be ill. Overjoyed, the Duke took the Count to a private room and, once inside, the man in the red mask killed the Duke and made the Count take his place in the banquet.
No plague was involved in the original story. That was the invention of Edgar Allan Poe who made up the plague to create a far more frightening story. [1] [2]
