Previous
Act 2, Scene 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If We Were Villains, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Free Will
Identity and Disguise
Love and Sexuality
Theatre and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
On opening night, Richard elbows Oliver hard in the ear during the assassination scene. He stumbles offstage and tells Alexander and James what happened through the pain in his head. James tells him that Richard hurt his wrists again, and Alexander says that he attacked him, too. Oliver urges James to show Alexander his bruises, and he does. Alexander swears and proposes a plan: if Richard tries to hurt them during the next show, they’ll gang up on him and hurt him for real during the assassination scene instead. James and Oliver agree to it, and Oliver leaves the interaction feeling ill at ease.
The fact that Richard has turned his violence to Oliver suggests that he might have found out about Meredith and Oliver’s kiss—but when Alexander mentions that he’s also been attacked, it looks like Richard is just hurting all of his friends in turns. The pact between the three of them mirrors the assassination plot hatched by Julius Caesar’s friends in the play, and their plan to instigate it during the assassination scene truly blurs the line between life and drama: more than ever, they’re becoming the characters they play and conspiring to kill Caesar.
Themes
