2016
“I Am Not Throwing Away My Shot”: Thoughts on Hamilton
“Just the hustle and ambition it took to get him off the island — this is a guy who wrote his way out of his circumstances from the get-go. That is part and parcel with the hip-hop narrative: writing your way out of your circumstances, writing the future you want to see for yourself. This is a guy who wrote at 14, ‘I wish there was a war.’ It doesn’t get more hip-hop than that.”
There is much that I’d like to say about this show, but in the interest of brevity and clarity, I’ve confined myself to four topics. Each of them will let me explain what I like so much about this musical while also sharing some reflections about the history behind the lyrics.
Alexander Hamilton:
Miranda is best, in my mind, when dealing with the biographical and psychological aspects of the title character. Hamilton was a desperate young man when he came to America, who (in a society that was very stratified and inaccessible to a man without property) longed for a war in which he could make his mark. A recurring theme lyrically and philosophically first appears in the third musical number, “My Shot”. In it, Hamilton and his young friends are eager for the opportunities war will bring, and repeatedly vow, “I am not throwing away my shot.” Miranda’s Hamilton shows that he identifies with the new country which he will help build with his own blood and toil when he says: “Hey yo, I’m just like my country, I’m young, scrappy and hungry, and I’m not throwing away my shot.”
The show is also great at expressing the idea that Hamilton was a ball of energy (his wife asks him “why do you write like you’re running out of time?”) and ambition due to the difficult circumstances of his youth. That said, while not masking Hamilton’s flaws, the show does minimize them. While the show does note that “Martha Washington named her feral tom cat after him”, it is presented as an aspect of his personality prior to the marriage with Elizabeth Schuyler that (in a day when a wife’s property became her husband’s) established him at the upper levels of New York society. In real life, Hamilton was a serial adulterer and probably what we would call a functioning alcoholic (though, so were a lot of people at a time when the average American drank seven gallons of alcohol yearly). I used to describe him to my students as “the most self-destructive person in American History”, and that is somewhat minimized in the musical.
The arc of the narrative does a good job of mirroring the arc of Hamilton’s life. At the end, after playing a key role in ending his rival Burr’s political career, and following the death of his oldest son, Philip in a duel over Hamilton’s honor, the former Federalist firebrand retired to a quiet life in New York. His nearly ruined marriage is depicted as recovering slowly, but it’s clear that the ultimate politician has no future in government. It is really left up to the audience members to decide if Hamilton accepted Burr’s challenge out of pride, or with a death wish. We’ve heard throughout the play that “history has its eyes on” Hamilton, and there is no doubt that his everlasting fame (at least, before Miranda got a hold of him) was due to his famous death.
Aaron Burr:
In a lot of ways, Burr is the other star of “Hamilton”, in the same way that Judas is the other star of “Jesus Christ Superstar“. As in the famous rock opera, where it takes Judas to bring Jesus to his apotheosizing death, Burr played a similar role in the history of the Founding Fathers.
The musical does a good job of establishing Burr’s reputation as a chameleon-like political figure whose ethos “speak less…smile more” conceals his true feelings. Burr was an orphan, but as the show makes note, he came from what at the time was American royalty. His grandfather was Jonathan Edwards, whose “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God“was the prototypical “fire and brimstone” sermon of the Great Awakening, while his father was a founder of what became Princeton University, thus making Burr the perfect mix of the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment; a sometimes incompatible mix that still causes conflict in our society today. I really like how the show seems to, in some ways, revolve around Burr’s (remember, he’s the narrator) frustration at having been passed in the race by a nobody. As Burr’s character says at the start of Act I:
“How does a bastard, orphan, son of whore
And a Scotsman,
Dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot
In the Caribbean by Providence,
Impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?”
Not to take anything away from Aaron Burr. Burr was a legitimate war hero, having served in the doomed attack that was the Battle of Quebec, but he never reached the rank of general (compared to the younger Hamilton, who after years as Washington’s aide-de-camp eventually rose (during the Adams presidency) to command the army of the United States. In the 1790’s Burr was a senator from New York (replacing Hamilton’s father-in-law), and he became the third Vice-President of the US (and first to fail to become Chief Executive in his own right) in 1801. The play does a good job of showing how Burr and Hamilton had careers and lives in parallel for a long time, including serving as lawyers together, and having kids who (at least a little) might have humanized and settled them down. Tragically, both men outlived their oldest children.
If Hamilton “wrote like he was running out of time”, he wasn’t alone. One of the great songs in the musical has characters marvel:
“Look around, look around at how lucky we are
To be alive right now!
History is happening in Manhattan and we just
Happen to be
In the greatest city in the world!”
and it wasn’t just in New York that history was happening. For the first time, a small set of colonies overthrew the rule of the most powerful nation on the planet. A few years later, the people of France rose up against their rulers and literally remade the world. And after that, a smallish soldier born well but in a colonial backwater, rose up to become the Emperor of Europe. The example of Napoleon and his rapid rise along with the other titanic changes mentioned above must have made the similarly vertically challenged Burr (and Hamilton) believe that they lived in an annus mirabilis when dreams could come true. That gives extra meaning to the exchange at the end of Act II after Burr has defeated Philip Schuyler for the Senate:
Burr: ..Schuyler’s seat was up for grabs, so I took it!
Hamilton: I’ve always considered you a friend.
Burr: I don’t see why that has to end!
Hamilton: You changed parties to run against my father in law!
Burr: I changed parties to seize the opportunity I saw.
I swear, your pride will be the death of us all! Beware: it goeth before the fall.
Of course, another of the many tragedies (both in the musical, and in real life), is that like Eliza Hamilton, Aaron Burr lived for 32 years after the fateful, fatal duel and never achieved what he must have thought was his destiny.
The Duel:
I’ve been fascinated by the Burr-Hamilton duel ever since I was a teenager, when I first read “Burr: A Novel”, by Gore Vidal, and when I saw the unrelated but visually striking movie, “The Duellists“. One thing that makes me so interested is that there is no authoritative “truth” about the fatal gunfight between the sitting Vice-President and the former commanding general of the U.S. Army, therefore, it is the perfect example of how history can be whatever one wants it to be.
I think it’s important to remember that the age of Hamilton and Burr was one of short lives, quick death, and was in a lot of ways a small world. People didn’t have long to make their mark, and in a small country, it was easier than it is now to rise to fame. The population of the United States in the 1800 Census (not counting Native Americans) was just over 5 million, and of them the following people couldn’t vote:
- men who did not own sufficient real estate
- people under 21
- all women
- all slaves
as a result, in a close election like that of 1800, reputation mattered–there were only a few thousand voters in each state (even the bigger ones like New York) and a man’s character was closely related to his honor, which at that time was the linchpin of his financial prospects. In a time when banks were rare and unstable, and when many people’s wealth was tied to things of limited liquidity (such as crops yet to be grown, or slaves unable to be sold) wealthy men depended on their ability to borrow money from other men of the same social stratum. Many of the Founders spent their lives in debt to other wealthy men, and this was due to the fact that a gentleman would accept the word of another gentleman (“on my honor”) that a debt would be repaid in full. In many cases, loans were made without collateral, because a man’s honor was said to be enough.
In other words, at the end of his life, Hamilton would have us believe that he planned to “throw away his shot”. This adds even greater poignance to the times earlier in the musical when he and other characters swear that they will NOT do so (in a different context, of course).
At the end of the song “The World Was Wide Enough”, Burr sings:
“Now I’m the villain in your history.I was too young and blind to see…I should have known.I should have knownThe world was wide enough for both HamiltonAnd me.”
This is a great reference to one of my all-time favorite lines! Every year when I taught this class, I would have Burr’s statement about the duel written on the board:
“Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.”
The Music:
“Look around, look around at how lucky we are /To be alive right now! / History is happening in Manhattan and we just / Happen to be / In the greatest city in the world!”
- A Winter’s Ball and Helpless: “A Winter’s Ball” shows when young, good looking (but out of his depth) Alexander is put into the orbit of the Schuyler sisters. Miranda is so good at using vocal style to convey young Alexander as being unprepared for what he sees in New York (but willing to learn how to succeed). After setting the stage that a good marriage can make a man, the show segues into “Helpless”. I love the harmony of the three sisters, and when they sing, “Helpless! Look into your eyes and the sky’s the limit I’m helpless! Down for the count and I’m drowning in ’em” I can’t help but think of how I feel when I look at my wife.
- Satisfied: In this song, Angelica Schuyler is at the wedding of Hamilton and her sister. She remembers falling in love almost at first sight with Alexander, but deciding that a match with him would be unwise, and passing him onto her sister, so “at least I keep his eyes in my life”. Later in the show it is clear that Angelica has always had an affection for Hamilton, though when his infidelities disrupt Eliza’s life, her sister is clearly on her side. I have always been deeply affected by stories of someone loving another from afar, and this song touches that nerve.
- Dear Theodosia: I’m not a father, but even so, songs about fatherhood have always ripped me up. This one from the end of the first act is particularly moving; the song shows the humanity (previously unglimpsed) in Burr (who sings to his new baby daughter) and Hamilton (who sings to his new baby son). Knowing that both men would outlive their children adds poignancy to the music. What parent, or for that matter caring adult hasn’t looked at an innocent child and felt “I’ll make the world safe and sound for you…If we lay a strong enough foundation we’ll pass it on to you, we’ll give the world to you, and you’ll blow us all away”? This song is incredibly moving on its own, but it also lends power the the duel scene in Act II, when Burr swears that Hamilton “will not make an orphan of my daughter”.
- It’s Quiet Uptown: This song from Act II shows a despondent, broken Hamilton trying to recover after the death of his son Philip in a duel. The refrain of the song breaks my heart:
“If you see him in the street, walking byHimself, talking to himselfHave pity,He is working through the unimaginable”
- Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story: Other than losing a child, losing a spouse is the other unfathomably horrible tragedy a person can face. In my own group of family and friends there are several examples of this, and it is my deepest personal dread. This song tells how Eliza Hamilton tried to carry on her husband’s work (and posthumously burnish his reputation) for the decades after his death. She worries if “when my time is up, have I done enough?”, and notes that her greatest pride is in founding an orphanage:
“I help to raise hundreds of children.I get to see them growing up.In their eyes I see you, AlexanderI see you every time.”
“I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel. Nor could I dwell on the topic lest it should unman me….Adieu best of wives and best of Women. Embrace all my darling Children for me. Ever yours, AH.”
Hits: 807