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Act 5, Scene 1
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
The opening night of King Lear goes well, and the fourth-years head halfheartedly to the cast party afterward. Alexander and Oliver walk to the Castle without James, who’s nowhere in sight. When they arrive, Oliver seeks out Meredith and finds her in the garden, just like she was on the night of the Julius Caesar cast party. This time, however, she sits alone. Oliver asks if she’s all right and offers to help her however he can. Meredith, crying, says that she needs to tell him something—but then decides to wait until later. Oliver watches her leave, worried. He wonders if she could have Richard’s murder on her chest, but he dismisses the idea. Then his mind turns to the day in Gwendolyn’s class when she and James kissed.
The setup for the cast party recalls the cast party for Julius Caesar on the night of Richard’s death—but the mood is completely opposite. Meredith, with no cellist talking to her in the garden, seems lonelier and sadder than ever, and Oliver can’t help her this time. Now she’s keeping a secret, too. He seems to think of her differently after her kiss with James, suggesting that he might blame her in some way for the passion that she and James appeared to share.
Themes
Oliver looks for James and finds him in the library. He’s standing before the open window, a bottle of vodka in hand. Every candle in the library is lit. He turns to face Oliver, and he sees that his stage makeup is still on. He addresses Oliver with Edmund’s lines. Oliver tries to ask him what’s wrong, but James keeps going, and finally Oliver answers him as Edgar. As James stares out the window, he delivers Edmund’s line: “Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out.” When Oliver asks, “Where is the villain, Edmund?” James breaks out of his lines and corrects Oliver’s delivery. He speaks Oliver’s line without the comma, as punctuation is decided by editors and compositors: “Where is the villain Edmund?”
James’s stage makeup still being on represents the profound blurring of the line between his stage and real-world personalities. He’s bringing the character of Edmund with him, to the point where he’ll only speak in Shakespeare’s words. At this point, the villain archetype has completely overtaken James’s own identity. He delivers Edmund’s line about the sword as if looking out the window causes him to remember something. James’s correction to Oliver’s delivery changes the meaning of “Edmund,” making him the “villain Edmund” instead of just a person that Edgar is addressing. James’s correction, then, is urging Oliver to label him the villain, succumbing to archetype.
Themes
James, still in the persona of Edmund, starts to grow more and more frenzied. He knocks a candle down and flees the library. Oliver blows the candles out and follows him downstairs. Encountering Filippa, Oliver asks her to keep Alexander and Wren sober. He asks the crowd where James is, and someone points him toward the bathroom. He enters to see James staring at his reflection in a cracked mirror, a dark smear on the counter seeming to come from Meredith’s mascara wand. Oliver pleads with James, begging him to tell him what’s wrong, but James refuses and shoves him away.
James’s distress seems to stem largely from his continued struggles with his sense of self. Accordingly, the mirror he looks into is cracked, breaking the image of his face into fractured pieces. The mascara wand indicates that James is lashing out at Meredith in some small, desperate way, too, by ruining her makeup. It suggests that James might be struggling with jealousy, just like Oliver is.
Themes
James flees into the garden with Oliver chasing after him. He turns around, sees Oliver behind him, and then grabs Wren and asks her to go to bed with him. She is taken aback but agrees. James looks at Oliver with a “bitter and vindictive” expression, and then he and Wren disappear upstairs. Oliver tries to follow them, but Alexander blocks him. Oliver is mute and immobile in the center of the room. He doesn’t notice at first that Meredith is gone.
James is growing increasingly defensive, like a cornered animal. When he propositions Wren, he confirms Oliver’s worst nightmare—although her surprise suggests that this is the first time they’ve been intimate. James’s expression and his focus on Oliver while leading Wren away are much firmer indicators of his jealousy; the event reads like retaliation for Oliver’s relationship with Meredith. Oliver’s attempt to follow them upstairs mirrors Richard’s pursuit of Oliver and Meredith at the Julius Caesar cast party. Somehow, he’s become the betrayed lover, even though his actual lover—Meredith—is elsewhere. The fact that Oliver doesn’t notice this suggests that his obsession with James is stronger than his concern for Meredith; ultimately, his priorities lie with James.
Themes
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