Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon’s Goblin Market (1985)

Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon’s stage adaptation of “Goblin Market” breaks new ground in a number of ways, not least by bringing “Goblin Market” into the genre of musical theatre. It is also the first musical setting to quite freely adapt Rossetti’s poem and add new textual content. In a significant interpretative move, Pen and Harmon’s dramatization gives Rossetti’s poem a new retrospective narrative frame and presents the story of the maidens’ encounters with goblins not as real but rather as a psychodrama generated by their memories and imagination. Pen and Harmon’s narrative framing directs audiences toward a more modern, adult, and psychoanalytical interpretation of Rossetti’s poem.