The Script
The writers Romano and Bond Potter explore the background of the play and the book that originated the musical. The adaptation made by Lin Miranda adds satire to Chernow’s book. Characters like Washington or Jefferson are opaque to Hamilton, but Hamilton is more ambitious and ruthless than the other founders; Hamilton is portrayed as an immigrant that came looking for his American dream, “if you work hard, you should rise to the top.” Romano highlights that Benjamin Franklin and Marquis de Lafayette must also be considered immigrants because they moved from one colony to another looking for better opportunities. As Lin Miranda said, Hamilton is a story about America told by America now, and through this musical, people of color had the opportunity to narrate America’s origin story. America, especially New York, is made by people from different places, as the founders of this country. If America became independent now, the new fathers would probably be blacks, Latin, and Asians. In one song during the musical, the actors remember us: “Look the way our country looks.” The book also refers to the challenge of this production facing Broadway’s history to use white to play minorities, a quote mentioned during the musical can resume all this effort made by Miranda: “Immigrants, we get the job.”
I agree that this musical creates a platform for discussing politics and contemporary social problems. For example, the conservative intellectual Brookhiser said that today, America is a Hamiltonian and wrote a thesis: “Alexander Hamilton: The man who made modern America.” The messenger from a future that we now inhabit.”
The book also criticizes that the musical doesn’t provide importance to topics like slavery, even the 40% of New Yorkers enslaved a person during the independence years, and Hamilton came from a land where enslaved people had been traded every day. Furthermore, the musical doesn’t go far in details about Hamilton’s life, like his parents or relationships outside his marriage. Still, the play concentrates on the controversial political ideas that made him unpopular, like his admiration for the British monarchic model. The play humanizes the founders of this country in a “pop” way. Still, historian Lyra D. Monteiro said, “This is the way that writers of popular history represent the founders as relatable, cool guys.” And the New York Times writer Annette Gordon-Reed said of Miranda’s character, “It’s not Hamilton. It’s an idea of who we would like Hamilton to be.”
The Stage
I picked this song because the action happening in the room where Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton are having dinner is created in the imagination of Mister Burr; the conversation between Hamilton and Burr at rap style with some trumpets annunciating a royal event (the dinner). In this conversation, Burr shows his jealousy of Hamilton when he talks about General Mercer, and Burr says, “And all he had to do was die,” but he doesn’t accept Hamilton’s answer, “That’s a lot less work.” The rhythm of the conversation changed when Hamilton said, “Do whatever it takes to get my plan on the Congress floor,”
After Trumpets sounds again, Burr lets his mind run, imagining what may be happening at that dinner; he calls the attendants Two Virginians and an immigrant, it may denote a derogatory tone. As Romano and Potter said, “Hamilton’s greatest strengths and weaknesses were the same. His drive and persistence, high ambitions, intense energies, laser-like focus, and writerly flair raised him to power, but taken too far; these same gifts made him impulsive and indiscreet.” (44) The confrontation between Hamilton and Burr was a clash of powers between two ambitious men who knew how to play the game of politics, the art of trade. The third trumpet sound invites the characters in the dinner to talk in the head of Burr with arguments that show the differences between these three men inside the room. In the last part of the song, Burr expresses his desire openly to be inside that room discussing the nation’s future. Jefferson and Madison had a different position about slavery than Hamilton, and also the two Virginian fathers had many more things in common about the future of the United States than the radical Hamilton ideas; for example, Hamilton wanted a monarchy, and he didn’t want to war against England, but the war to Louisiana. To finalize my appreciation of this song, Burr talks about the political discussions at that dinner like a dinner table bargain where both parts must be dividing the nation.
The Audience
Hamilton has been a great success on Broadway since its premiere in 2015. The average spectators enjoy the play as it is; a musical. However, historians, critics, and professionals with knowledge of American history generated diverse opinions about the play and how it tells the story of its founders. Its success is because the musical was released during the Obama time facing white American patriotism. These events make us review our past and history from a contemporary perspective, probably the most cultural and diverse democracy in our history. These new appreciations have created new theories, like the director of the Disney movie Ava DuVernay that refers to Alexander Hamilton as someone who “believed in manumission, not abolition.”
Slavery was a reality that divided the country at that time; the economy of the south was based on slavery and everything around them. But slavery was not only in the south; Romano and Potter commented that 40% of New Yorkers were slaveholders. Probably this statistic may live in the shadows if Hamilton, the musical, wouldn’t be a success. Characters of our history like Jefferson or Madison, and even Burr enslaved people. They supported slavery, but people like Hamilton, who was against slavery, have historians trying to find the ambiguity of his personality and actions. One of the arguments lay in his mother, enslavers. His wife’s family was slaveholders, which probably made him a slaveholder.
The article questions the references because they are ambiguous and unclear but certainly, we are living in an age where we are “free” to examine our history; we have the tools, Internet, and free libraries, but we don’t have the critical thinking, we accept what the history wrote on books. Hamilton, the musical, doesn’t propose cultural reparation because the damage is all Americans’ minds. The play creates an opportunity to see our founders as humans with issues of white men, the same problems the contemporary white men. The writer, Schuessler, brings to the article Hamilton’s posture pro-war or “violence solves conflicts,” are not the same gun conflicts and wars provoked by white governments these days? Probably Alexander Hamilton hated slavery; the play makes us love him because of how cool he is. So, I consider that people who watch the play must enjoy it as it is, an entertainment piece, but at the same time, must create their own criteria about the history, the founders, and his reality.
Vera Academic Research 