The Masque of the Red Death

“The “Red Death” had long devastated Sleepy Hollow Country. No pestilence had been ever so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avator and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood. 

But the Prince 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 retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. The abbey was amply provisioned, with such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could 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 improvisatori, there were ballêt-dancers, there were musicians, there were cards, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

Join us this October for an evening of intrigue when Lyndhurst Mansion transforms into Prince Prospero’s Abbey from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. This immersive theater experience will take you through the Gothic halls of our 1842 historic home, dressed in the garish colors and grotesque beauty of Poe’s 1842 horror story.

Performed and produced by Irvington Shakespeare Company, guests will experience the feverish masquerade as a guest of Prospero, walking with delight and dread from room to room as they hear the tale of the doomed revelers.