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Act 4, Scene 6
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 sleeps through the next day and awakes to see Filippa sitting on the bed. She tells him that James was missing from the day’s classes but has since returned to the Tower. Filippa urges Oliver to go talk to James, telling him that they have to stick together, and Oliver eventually relents. She leaves, and he goes to the Tower. James is sitting on Oliver’s bed. Oliver starts talking to him, comparing him to the sparrow from Hamlet. He yells at James, throwing a book at him, and laments the fact that he’s not really as angry at him as he wants to be. Subsiding, he asks a pained-looking James what’s wrong. “Everything,” James replies. Then he touches the bruise under Oliver’s eye. James says he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but he “want[s] to hurt the whole world.”
In Hamlet, the sparrow more or less represents the inevitability of death. Oliver’s reference to it here suggests that he feels as though he’s watching James change and suffer in front of him and is powerless to stop him. As Oliver looks at James, he sees how fragile James has become. It’s also James’s sense of self that seems to be dying—the charismatic hero doesn’t hit his best friend like that, after all. James has bruised Oliver, much like Richard did, and in a similar way, it’s evidence of his changing self and his wrongdoing. Fragile though he may be, James’s words about inflicting pain on the world are truly villainous. More and more, it seems like Alexander was right about James getting swept up in his part.
Themes
