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Susan E Matassa, Redeeming Lysimachus: The Miracle of Conversion in Pericles, Literary Imagination, Volume 26, Issue 3, November 2024, Pages 216–225, https://doi.org/10.1093/litimag/imae025
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Extract
As the maid Marina languishes in a Mytilenian brothel, she must preserve herself by means of argument, not arms. In a very brief scene, two gentlemen exiting the brothel discuss their surprising encounter with a girl who “preached divinity” (4.5.4).1 The conversation of these men, who claim that they are “no more for the bawdy houses,” serves to assure the audience of Marina’s virginity, an important assurance to make when the heroine spends much of the play in a house of prostitution (4.5.6). While the audience does not see Marina’s conversation with these two men, the audience does see her conversation with Lysimachus, the governor of Mytilene. Much is at stake in this rhetorical moment of the play, for in the final act Pericles will approve of Lysimachus’s offer of marriage to his daughter. If Marina’s appeals are not successful or if the audience does not believe that Lysimachus’s conversion is genuine, then the play may seem to end with a predatorial sexual relationship similar to the one with which it began in Antioch. Although Pericles reunites with his wife and daughter, if that daughter is then attached to an intemperate, unconverted man, the play’s ultimate vision of recovery and reconciliation will be marred, perhaps even to the point of failure.
