New Elements
The words of Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” are both spoken and sung in this piece of musical theatre. In addition to the musical score that Pen adds to much of Rossetti’s text, co-writers Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon also introduce new textual elements which include original dialogue adapted from Rossetti’s poem, lyrics based on other Rossetti poems, as well as lyrics from other writers including Dr. Theodore Baker, Christian Morgenstern (translated by Max Knight), and John Gay.
textual additions
Newly introduced content adds a novel dimension of competitiveness between the sisters and develops further some distinctions implied in the original poem. For instance, in the song, “Some There Are Who Never Venture,” based on lyrics by John Gay, Pen and Harmon invite audiences to ponder and compare the relative merits and shortcomings of Laura’s risk-taking versus Lizzie’s timidity and failure to experience the unknown. In this song, musical cues emphasise the differences between the sisters as they sing a duet, each simultaneously singing different words and different melodies. Laura sings,
Let them bide in church and chapel,
Let them practice what they preach,
Must we if we love an apple,
Never more desire a peach. (Pen, Harmon, and Rossetti, pp. 88-89)
Meanwhile Lizzie urges her sister to return to home and safety:
Come with me home, Laura,
What if we should lose our way.
The night is growing darker,
We must not stay. (Pen, Harmon, and Rossetti, p. 91)
The next song, “Mirage,” has lyrics taken from the first and third stanzas of Rossetti’s poem “Mirage” from Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) and music by Charles Ives. In this new dramatic context, “Mirage” effectively settles the contest between risk and restraint in favour of Lizzie’s self-control and rejection of temptations of illusory value. A declining Laura now sings,
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake—
I wake exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream’s sake.Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream’s sake. (Pen, Harmon, and Rossetti, pp. 96-98)
maturation and change
Next, “Passing Away” brings another Rossetti poem into this stage adaptation, with selected lines from the first stanza of the third section of “Old and New Year Ditties,” the penultimate poem in the Goblin Market volume:
Passing away, saith the world,
Passing away.
Chances, beauty and youth
Sapped day by day:
Passing away.
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim,
Is the dark hair changing to grey? (Pen, Harmon, and Rossetti, pp. 99-107)
Taken together, the lyrics in “Mirage” and “Passing Away” effectively emphasize the illusory nature of the goblin fruits’ promise, the irrevocable change that tasting them brings on, the inevitability of aging and changing, and the problem of mutability itself. This newly introduced song sequence adds an adult perspective to “Goblin Market” and underscores Pen and Harmon’s reading of Rossetti’s poem in terms of maturation and change: adulthood brings a different awareness and reality than childhood.
intertextuality and Goblin Market and Other Poems
One last Rossetti poem is introduced into the score at the play’s conclusion, when Lizzie and Laura sing together “Two Doves,” a setting of another poem from Goblin Market and Other Poems, “Song” [“Two doves upon the selfsame branch”]. Cumulatively, Pen and Harmon’s integration of other poems from the Goblin Market volume brings “Goblin Market” into intertextual dialogue with other pieces from Rossetti’s original volume. This could be seen as a reading of Rossetti’s Goblin Market volume as thematically and symbolically unified and meaningfully internally resonant, an argument that has also been made and developed by literary critics, but only at a later date.
Sources:
Pen, Polly, Peggy Harmon and Christina Rossetti. Goblin Market: By Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon; Music by Polly Pen; Adapted from the poem by Christina Rossetti. Dramatists Play Service, 1985. www.dramatists.com/pdf/GoblinMarketPerusal.pdf.