If We Were Villains

Shakespeare’s plays and their themes are ubiquitous motifs in the plays. The novel features and quotes plays, including Julius Caesar, Pericles, King John, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Richard III. The plays act as narrative and plot devices and add depth to the novel’s themes and characters. Often, characters use their roles to convey their feelings for each other; Oliver, for instance, lets his jealousy of James and Wren show through his lines as Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet. The text also features several staples of Shakespeare’s plays, such as letters, secrets, and tragic flaws. Characters receive letters that change their lives, such as the letter that assigns Richard a marginal role in Macbeth and James’s last letter to Oliver. Characters are defined by a fatal flaw that leads to their downfall: Richard’s anger, Oliver’s naivete, Meredith’s vanity, and James’s obsession.

Elements of Elizabethan theatre, the period during which many of Shakespeare’s famous plays were written and performed, are braided into the fabric of the novel. Elizabethan plays did not shy away from violence, intrigue, revenge, and bloodshed. They also featured big, dramatic emotions such as passion, lust, jealousy, and obsession. At the peak of the Elizabethan theatre, the stage tended to be open.