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Act 2, Scene 10
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
In 2007, Oliver and Colborne go for a walk by the lake. As they walk through the woods to the shore, Oliver thinks about how inevitable the story feels in retrospect. Looking at the trees around him, he wonders what his old friends think of him now. Colborne asks him about the weather “that night,” and Oliver tells him he's not completely sure—his friends drank and felt and fought only in extremes. Colborne asks Oliver to cut the poetic padding from his story, but Oliver tells him that he needs it. Relenting, Colborne asks him what really happened on the night of Richard’s death, and Oliver repeats a shortened version of how he ended up in bed with Meredith.
It's easy for Oliver to blame his friends’ actions on fate when they happened so long ago—and given that he was imprisoned for those actions, maybe that’s the easiest way for him to reconcile things. When Colborne says, “that night,” he seems to refer to the night of Richard’s death, but the familiar phrasing and refusal to put it into precise words suggests that he and Oliver always refer to it with the weight of that significance. Oliver’s insistence on couching his story in poetic language demonstrates the continued importance of words to him—the only way that he can make sense of his story is by treating it artistically.
Themes
Colborne is surprised that Oliver really did have sex with Meredith, but Oliver assures him that it’s true. As he tells Colborne more, he thinks about where Meredith is now. She acts in a legal drama based on Henry VI, which the other inmates used to watch because of her skimpy costumes. They respected Oliver more once they found out that he’d had sex with her, but he kept some details private—like the fact that he thinks they might have briefly loved each other. Colborne tells Oliver that Meredith came to see him on the Friday of the week that he was arrested. Oliver admits that he’d missed her, and the two men fall silent.
Like Alexander, Meredith seems to still be in Shakespeare’s thrall—and if the costume is any indication, she’s still playing the same parts. It seems like she might have had less success than Filippa in leaving her typecast behind. At this point, the depth of Oliver’s feelings for Meredith becomes clearer, but so does their temporariness—Oliver is still confused about how he feels, but he doesn’t seem to still love her, even though he misses her.
Themes
