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Act 3, Scene 18
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 stand by the lake. Oliver finds it difficult to continue the story, knowing that it’s about to take a turn for the worse. Colborne asks Oliver if he blames Shakespeare for what happened, and Oliver replies in the affirmative. He says that actors feel the emotions they portray as if they’re their own, and the passions of Shakespeare’s characters can get tangled up in one’s own feelings. “You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough,” he tells Colborne. Colborne asks him to continue his story. Oliver says that Christmas was when everything fell apart. The separation from one another cracked them and made them break when they came together again.
Oliver puts the novel’s theme of corruption into words, arguing that art has the power to transform people for the worse by allowing them to justify their own actions. Art, Shakespeare, and poetry join the list of things (like fate and the stars) that Oliver can blame for what he’s done. For actors in particular, empathy can be dangerous—and here, it's worth remembering that James admitted during Gwendolyn’s class that his weakness is his tendency to get too absorbed in his roles.
Themes
