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Act 5, Scene 2
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
Oliver spends the rest of the night looking for Meredith. When he can’t find her, he ends up sleeping next to Filippa. The next morning, everyone is gone, so he starts to clean the Castle. Checking and tidying everyone’s rooms, he comes to Richard’s closed door. He enters and looks around at his possessions, noticing that one of the knights in his chess set is knocked over. Under the bed, he finds a pair of Richard’s shoes with the laces messily tangled, and he feels a wave of grief. He leaves the room in a rush and ascends to the Tower.
The toppled knight in the chess set is like a stand-in for Richard himself: once proud and intimidating, he’s now dead. The details in the room remind Oliver of Richard’s humanity. For months, Richard has been a taunting image and phantom in Oliver’s mind, but things like his tangled shoelaces make him real and remind Oliver that they were once friends—and so he feels grief, not guilt, for the first time.
Themes
Oliver looks around the room he shares with James. James is neat, so there’s little for him to clean. He smooths out James’s bedspread, trying not to think about him and Wren, but then notices bits of cotton coming away in his hand. Investigating, he finds a long tear in the mattress. When he puts his hand inside, he pulls out an old boathook crusted with bits of blood. Oliver picks it up and runs with a hand pressed to his mouth.
With Oliver only a few feet away, James has been sleeping on a murder weapon for months. It must have constantly reminded him of what he did the night of Richard’s death, and the discomfort of the cover-up represents the baggage, guilt, and horror that James has been carrying with him ever since he killed Richard. Like James, the boathook was disguised in plain sight all along.
Themes
