Mystrical Setting of "The Masque of the Red Death"

     The action takes place in the newly constructed "castellated abbey" of Prince Prospero. The castle has been boarded up, leaving "means of neither ingress nor egress" in an effort to keep out the Red Death, a plague that has killed half of the population in Prince Prospero's kingdom. The majority of the story's action takes place in the Imperial suite, which contains seven rooms, each exclusively decorated and lighted with a specific color, the exception being the last room whose black interior is complemented by red windows. Although the narrator never gives a specific time, the events occur most likely during the middle ages as indicated by the existence of castles, a sharp division between nobles and peasants, and the existence of a deadly plague.