The 2015 hit musical “Hamilton” took the broadway world by storm when it took the history of America and of Alexander Hamilton and completely flipped it on its head. Not only did it take a different stance on the revolution by not casting any main characters as their original race but it also allowed a broad audience of people to learn about and understand the life of a founding father that most people are unfamiliar with. “Hamilton” dives deep into different views of Alexander and the revolution throughout the play and nowhere is this more prevalent than in the opening song. The song “Alexander Hamilton” blends the development of Hamilton’s character with the differing perspectives of the characters to set up the musical as a new take on …show more content…
Because it is the beginning of the show, the first song has to explain who Alexander Hamilton is, “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a 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?” (Miranda 1-4). The song starts immediately into Hamilton’s character development and wastes no time telling the audience that there is a lot more to Alexander Hamilton than meets the eye. The rest of the song also goes on to detail more events in his life to show how interesting his story is and how important it will be, “Me? I loved him. And me? I’m the damn fool who shot him. There’s a million things I haven’t done but just you wait” (Miranda 68-71). The song never tells what he will go on to do and hooks the audience into trying to find out after they have learned so much information about him. By setting up Hamilton as a character in the very first scene, the audience learns about an otherwise relatively unknown founding father and want to learn more about him throughout the
He accuses Jefferson of being “off getting high with the French” while “we — (being Hamilton and other true Americans, in this case directly associating him with George Washington, who was with Hamilton in the situation referred to here, the siege at Yorktown) — almost died in a trench.” In a final contrast to Hamilton himself, he describes Jefferson as “hesitant” and “reticent.” Hamilton, neither of those things, finishes with the mature “Damn, you’re in worse shape than the national debt is in / Sittin’ there useless as two shits / Hey, turn around, bend over, I’ll show you where my shoe fits.” By that point, the Congress is so involved that they don’t wait for a pause to laugh and they even provide a chanted accompaniment to the last lines before erupting into chaos. It takes George Washington to calm everyone down, and though Jefferson taunts that Hamilton doesn’t “have the votes,” Hamilton walks away from the battle the clear
You may of heard about the musical Hamilton, witch is about the great founding father Alexander Hamilton. Do you know all the other facts about his life? Here are some of his biggest facts.
Everyone has heard the name Alexander Hamilton, but few are familiar with his views and actions regarding the survival of the young American republic. He could be recognized for anything from serving our fledgling country by fighting in the New York militia; to serving his community as a lawyer and as a national tax agent; to beginning his political career as a representative for New York at the National Congress. Though most would agree his most important contribution to our struggling republic was to spearhead the project which formed the doctrine helping to establish the foundation in which modern democracy is based, the Articles of Confederation.
The book was the biography about one of our founding fathers and our first Treasury-Secretary. While reading the 800-page book, Manuel stated: "Hip-hop songs started rising off the page" (PBS). Alexander Hamilton was born in the Caribbean and was raised in a broken family surrounded by slavery. His father left him, his mother passed away and there was a devastating hurricane on his home island of St. Croix. Alexander Hamilton put pen to paper and wrote a poem and as a result of his writing, won a scholarship and found his way to America. Lin-Manuel describes him as "An immigrant and an outsider who writes his way in" (Keeper of the Flame). When Lin-Manuel read that Hamilton wrote a poem to get off the
Alexander Hamilton was born a bastard child in the West Indies and demonstrated great intellectual potential at an early age. He was sent to New York City for schooling and studied at King’s College, now Columbia University. His vision of America took a more capitalistic tone and “he was determined to transform an economically weak and fractious cluster of states into a powerful global force” (Tindall & Shi, 2010). Hamilton advocated a strong central government. He was bold and persuasive and his philosophies quite extraordinary for his time.
After his death, Hamilton’s legacy was mainly carried on by his wife, Eliza, who dedicated her life to preserving his legacy and making sure that he was not forgotten while she was alive. After Alexander’s death, Eliza told his story through doing things such as helping raise money for his mentor and friend, George Washington’s, memorial, and founding the first private orphanage in New York City which paid respect to her late husband who was an orphan. She also made Hamilton’s life and letters accessible, so that Alexander’s history would be easier to trace back to. She also spoke out about issues that Hamilton felt strongly about, such as slavery. Eliza made it her life goal to continue Hamilton’s legacy onto generations to come, which, indeed it has. Since Alexander’s death, his life has been documented through several biographies, most popularly, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow which inspired the Grammy and Tony award winning Broadway show, Hamilton: An American Musical. Since Hamilton first came to Broadway, Alexander and Eliza Hamilton have been given the recognition that they had not been given, but rightfully deserve.
In the early morning on July 11th, 1804, Alexander Hamilton found himself in the exact same position his son had been in only three years earlier. Due to severe personal issues between Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s political
This book may be aimed towards the audience of adults, but I hope that soon teenagers will soon become interested in History. I have alway been a huge fan of American History, but I do not like to read. This book though I do want to read, because of the amazing explanations of “The Duel.” Ever since this broadway show Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda I have wanted to learn more about the life of Alexander Hamilton,. Whenever I find a book that describes Hamilton’s life I want to read it, and i'm glad I read Founding Brothers. Within this book Ellis uses many quotes from Hamilton and Burr which is personally one of my favorite parts. The quotes of Hamilton is one of my favorite parts of the book because of Hamilton's amazing skills with a paper and pen. Another element of the book I enjoyed is the still problematic conclusion of Hamilton's death. In “The Duel” there were two shots fired, one by Hamilton and one by Burr. There are two hypothesis’ shared in the book on who shot first. This is important to me because the author was not biased and did not only include one option, I feel like in doing this they gave the reader a choice of which conclusion they want. Joseph J. Ellis did not only stay unbiased he also included some fun and interesting little tidbits throughout the story. When I say this I mean when he described the connection between the weapons used in “The Duel.”
“If you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?” Lin-Manuel Miranda raps at the beginning of his hit musical, Hamilton. This sentence truly epitomizes the ideal that governed Alexander Hamilton’s life; that is to say that he was always a weighty advocate for the things in which he believed. His accomplishments range from orchestrating the Bank of New York to being a delegate for the Continental Congress, proving him to be a well rounded Founding Father. Nonetheless many would like to discredit Hamilton because he, like all human beings, had significant flaws; he had an affair, he had trouble keeping his head, and many other countless flaws. However, does not every human being have a multitude of shortcomings? From the perspective of
Through his writing, war tactics, financial prowess, and leadership skills, Hamilton succeeded in demonstrating how previously marginalized people took on the responsibility and burden of shaping the American history. Miranda’s Hamilton—though presented as an ambitious immigrant hustler and the protagonist in one of the Republic’s early sex scandals is also unambiguously and properly shown as the godfather of the idea that America should be a place of speculative enterprise backed up by big money. It is due to his unfailing effort that Hamilton’s legacy of heroism lives through his portrait in the ten-dollar
Alexander Hamilton was disliked by many people but, he is now popular because of a hit Broadway show created by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton was born on January 11, 1755 or 1757 in Charleston, Nevis in the British West Indies. He was abandoned by his father which made him an orphan at the age of 13. Hamilton started attending school in Elizabethtown, New Jersey but, plans changed, and he entered Kings College. At the age of 17 he was already interested in government. Later, in 1776 he was introduced to George Washington. He became Washington’s advisor not long after that. Some main events that changed Hamilton’s life were his family, his accomplishments, and George Washington.
The broadway hit play Hamilton, written by Lin Manuel Miranda, is viewed as an educational play about Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States’ founding fathers and the first Secretary of the Treasury. The play captures the spirit of Alexander Hamilton’s ambition, eloquence, and mistakes in a revolutionary format-as revolutionary as Hamilton himself! Combining rap, musical theater, and history, Hamilton is an enthralling and entertaining play that is mostly accurate to the real Alexander Hamilton. The details of Hamilton’s life and relationships that were misrepresented in the play to achieve the theatrical flair.
Hamilton was confronted by James Monroe on accusations that Hamilton was guilty of defrauding the U.S. Treasury. Hamilton confessed he had been having an affair with Maria Reynolds. When Madison learned this he promised to keep it a secret but was not truthful. “As Hamilton was emerging as a leading Federalist presidential candidate, the papers were leaked to an anti-Federalist paper” (Jeffrey). This information, which was supplied by Monroe, ended Hamilton’s presidential campaign. In the song, “We Know”, Madison, Jefferson, and Burr repeat “He’s never gon’ be president now” (Miranda). After the publication of the Reynolds Pamphlet Hamilton’s presidential hopes were destroyed. After his failed presidential campaign, Hamilton never really had any high ranking
Most of all, those values that the American musical celebrated — and that is those values of American life, American philosophy, American belief — what we find is by the mid-1960s all of those beliefs, all of those philosophies, are being challenged, are being upset. As in all genres, the musical has had its share of failures. Some worthy dramas have been pressed into service and musicalized and sometimes butchered in the process, and audiences have had to watch a fine play diluted into a mediocre musical. But the successes have been many and spectacular, and they have left a long lasting effect on the American art and culture.
“Rise up! When you’re living on your knees, you rise up.” In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton and his fellow colonists “rise up” against the British monarchy’s oppression of the colonies. The lyric very much relates to Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle. The Jungle follows the story of an immigrant family living in Chicago whose lives and human dignities are exploited due to American Capitalism and corruption. Sinclair conveys his attitude toward this through multiple voices, and ultimately, elucidates the need for the working class to “rise up” against corporate America. One of the voices represents America’s corrupt Capitalists and how they dissuade workers from going on strike. Another explicitly tells