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Act 3, 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
At Richard’s memorial service, the fourth-year drama students are seated in the front rows with Richard’s family. Oliver senses everyone watching and whispering about him as he enters. For a brief second, Oliver makes eye contact with Richard’s father, an imposing man who looks just like his dead son. Dean Holinshed gives a speech in which he compares Richard to King Henry V, a complicated hero. He reads out a stanza from Shakespeare’s play Henry V, which includes the lines, “[…] scourge the bad revolting stars / That have consented unto Henry’s death […]” Finishing his speech, he unveils a portrait of Richard as Julius Caesar which will be hung in the theatre lobby. Looking at the picture, Oliver is struck by Richard’s glare and feels like he is alive and wrathful again.
The fourth-years’ seating assignment underlines how close they were supposed to be with Richard and how twisted their closeness became in the weeks leading up to their death. In his reading, Dean Holinshed frames Richard’s death as something outside of any human’s control, assigning blame to the stars (i.e., fate). This is ironic, given that the fourth-years were in control of Richard’s fate and death and chose to let him die. The portrait of Richard mirrors the posters of him as Caesar, and they have a similar effect upon Oliver—he feels observed and under Richard’s thumb, even after his death.
Themes
Wren stands and takes the microphone to give a eulogy. She tells the crowd that while Richard was unlikeable, she loved him and feels like a part of herself is missing with him gone. Watching her, James looks desperate and ill as he grabs Oliver’s hand without seeming to see him. Wren concludes her eulogy by urging the audience to grieve and slowly move on. She leaves the podium and, collapsing onto her uncle’s lap, begins to shake.
Wren’s emotion underlines the consequences of the group’s choice: she, the gentlest of them all, is suffering with Richard gone. James seems particularly guilty, which implies both a special closeness with Wren and a particular feeling of complicity in Richard’s death.
Themes
