And Now Again the Music Swells and the Dreams Live and Write to and Fro More Merrily Than Ever
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The Masque of the Ruby-red Decease Foolishness and Folly
Foolishness and Folly
- The Masque of the Cherry Decease
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The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external earth could take care of itself. In the concurrently it was folly to grieve, or to call back. (2)
The utilize of "folly" in this spot is ironic. Isn't information technology ridiculous to believe it'due south folly to think? Yet that's exactly what Prospero'south followers advocate, because if they spent time thinking, instead of enjoying themselves, they would be troubled.
Merely these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. (viii)
The prototype we go of Prospero's party is 1 of wild and uncontrolled revelry. The narrator connects that revelry this to life, in opposition to death, which information technology ignores. It'due south the gloomy chiming of the clock – a reminder of the passing of time – that stops the revel.
It was toward 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 brawl of the most unusual magnificence. (3)
Prince Prospero's nearly lavish commemoration of life occurs just when the Red Expiry is raging "most furiously" away. Information technology' s well-nigh as if he's deliberately – and foolishly – tempting fate.
In truth the masquerade license of the nighttime was virtually unlimited; but the effigy in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the premises of even the Prince's indefinite decorum. (ix)
On i level, the appearance of someone in a Blood-red Death costume is the height of folly. Whoever it is appears to exist making a joke out of something that even Prospero and his friends are unwilling to express joy at. Dressing up as the Cerise Decease? Not funny. Offensive.
Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood well-nigh him --"who dares insult united states of america with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him --that we may know whom we take to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!" (11)
Prospero's reaction seems rush, impulsive, and extreme to the bespeak of foolishness. He may exist a passionate homo and an imaginative artist, but does he ever retrieve?
But the Prince Prospero was happy and brave and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand unhurt and light-hearted friends from amid the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. (2)
This clarification jars completely with the preceding paragraph about the Reddish Death "devastating the countryside." Prospero and his friends don't seem to care i bit. They're feeling "happy," "hale," and "light-hearted." They merely want to go along having a practiced time, and refuse to take death at all seriously: the classical image of folly.
Only when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled equally 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 threescore minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) in that location came notwithstanding some other chiming of the clock, and so were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. (five)
The dancers and musicians dismiss equally "folly" their nervousness at the chiming of the clock. In that location are two levels as to what'due south going on here. On the surface, it might seem silly to get jumpy on account of a clock – they're right to express mirth it off. But on a more symbolic level, the clock represents death. What they're trying to laugh off as foolishness is their ain fright of death, which makes them foolish. It'south telling that, in spite of themselves, the partiers are not able to control their own fretfulness.
The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, in that location were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Dazzler, there was vino. (2)
Amidst the "appliances of pleasure" that Prospero packs his palace with are two archetype symbols of foolishness: vino, and buffoons (also called "fools"). It's interesting that they're mixed in with the "high" arts.
And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than e'er, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. (7)
After the clock makes everyone nervously stop in their tracks, they always become correct back to what they're doing. Correct back to the drunken pleasures of life, in other words. The image seems symbolic of their refusal to have death seriously.
It was then, even so, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on business relationship of a mortiferous terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to inside three or four feet of the retreating figure… (13)
Prospero's atmosphere leads him to practise but nearly the most foolish (and ironic) thing possible: he chases downward and tries to kill Expiry. That captures the foolishness of trying to avoid death at its absurd farthermost. Information technology's no surprise what happens next…
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Source: https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/masque-of-red-death/quotes/foolishness-and-folly
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