166 years after his mysterious death, the work of Edgar Allen Poe still fascinates readers. His stories of madness, murder and torture have lived well beyond the Victorian Era in which they were produced.
Poe's output was prolific, haunting and groundbreaking. With "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," he penned the first detective novel paving the way for the likes of characters like Sherlock Holmes.
And among the macabre master’s most famous works is his poem, “The Raven.”
It tells of a talking raven’s visit to a distraught man which brings him to the brink of insanity.
It’s a fitting tale for Halloween and one of the pieces that will be performed at this month’s “Shakespeare/Poe; A Night of Readings from the Dark Side,” being staged at three different venues in New Castle County.
David Stradley, the artistic director for the Delaware Shakespeare Festival says a lot of people enjoy a good scare.
“Our lives for the most part are so safe nowadays and there is kind of a primal urge, a primal excitement about having that fear in you that tingle on the back of your neck, it's not something that we experience all that many times,” said Stradley.
Ticket information for “A Night of Readings from the Dark Side” is available at delshakes.org.
This piece is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.