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The desire for revenge can so pervade the inner world of an individual as to become an obsessive and destructive force in that person's life. For a creative artist, such an idée fixe can go so far as to totally dominate his or her work, with ruinous results. Although both Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) and James Ensor (1860–1949) were under the sway of such imperatives, Poe's urge for revenge was, for the most part, kept under control and was subject to his critical self-scrutiny and demanding aesthetic standards; in contrast, Ensor's thirst for vengeance so egregiously permeated his work that it evolved from a possibly stimulating influence to a straitjacket that finally contributed to choking off his creativity.
In addition to their revengeful propensities, Poe and Ensor were directly linked by the influence Poe's tales had on Ensor, who claimed to have “devoured” them. Indeed, he made etchings illustrating two of these stories, “King Pest” and “Hop Frog”.
The former tale takes place in England during a time of wide-spread plague. Two drunken sailors have left the Thames-side Inn, where they have been carousing, and are headed back to their ship. Losing their way, they find themselves in an area that has been placed “under ban” because of a plague. Inadvertently, they stumble into an undertaker's shop, and lifting a trap door to the basement, they descend only to discover an extraordinary assembly: Seated around a huge “punch bowl” are six bizarre individuals, presided over by a man identified as King Pest (or plague); the others in his retinue are the Arch Duke Pest-Iferous, the Duke Pest-Ilential, the Duke Tem-Pest, and so forth