![]() ![]() Keep reading (and rapping!) so you don’t miss a thing.Ī version of this story first appeared in November 2016. So we’ve broken down a couple of fan-favorite songs and revealed some history lesson gems hidden in the lyrics. Luckily, most of the lyrics of the Hamilton album have been explained by Lin-Manuel Miranda himself. ![]() I’ll admit, some of the lyrics went right over my head - it helps to have a quick and dirty guide to all the historical references and names. The tracks on Hamilton, although delightfully modern and wide in musical range, require some careful analyzing, though. I mean, Miranda has George Washington rapping fire bars - no wonder this musical has become a classic. And ever since it hit Broadway, it garnered a major cult following - from those who’ve either watched the show or listened to the soundtrack in its entirety on Spotify. It received a record-setting 16 Tony nominations and won 11, including Best Musical. We even had our own Hermione who had all sorts of gems to share.Hamilton: An American Musical changed musical theater as we know it. It’s not one of the showier songs of the show, but it’s worth exploring. In the piano accompaniment, one hand plays Eliza’s “Helpless” theme while the other hand plays Angelica’s “Satisfied” theme.Īs usual, we ran out of time to unpack this song because there was so much to discover. To me the most impressive is while Eliza and Angelica simultaneously encourage Hamilton to take a break and go away for the summer with them. The interweaving musical themes provide additional complexity to this song. Philip performs his piece with his ever-supportive mother providing accompaniment according my favorite stage direction, Eliza’s son, Philip, is turning nine, and he wants his father’s attention to perform his newly-composed rap. In an attempt to capture his attention, Eliza resorts to calling her husband using the note pattern for “Alexander” that has thus far been unique to Angelica. He considered it to be 18 th century sexting.Įliza interrupts this flirtation to pull attention firmly back to the home front and family where she feels it belongs. Lin-Manuel Miranda said that learning that the two had indeed flirted through punctuation enchanted him so much that he had to incorporate it somehow. In another lovely dimension of the song, Angelica and Hamilton have an exchange in their letters to each other discussing taking the phrase, “My dearest Angelica,” and that adding a comma after dearest to make it, “My dearest, Angelica” completely changes the meaning to make it far more intimate. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a diehard Disney fan, so he undoubtedly used the line for the reference double whammy. I couldn’t believe that the students missed the Disney reference but nailed the Shakespeare reference. Later in the song, Angelica uses the line, “Screw your courage to the sticking place,” which is a two-fer reference, first to the original line in Macbeth, but second it is mentioned in Gaston’s song in Beauty and the Beast. ![]() In each case, drawing the connection between the Hamilton character and the Macbeth character instantly adds great texture to the persona in the new work. Jefferson is cast in the role of Macduff, the character who arrives after Hamilton/Macbeth makes a play for power and consistently opposes the title character. Madison is identified as Banquo, both initially loyal lieutenants of the respective main characters but eventually opposing their former friends. (Another student in her annotations of this song commented, “I’m pissed that my high school didn’t make me read Macbeth,” so getting the references is obviously desirable.) Anyway, Hamilton identifies himself as Macbeth, whose ambition was his downfall. Three of my students had read Macbeth, and one provided a juicy but reasonably complete synopsis upon request. To this day, most American high school students have read at least one of Shakespeare’s plays, although I learned that there is some variety in the selections. Two of the most enduring works that nearly all colonists would have shared experience with were the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. The more that people are acquainted with a source, the more powerful the reference is. The Harry Potter books are familiar to a large number of people, so I don’t have to explain the reference. For example, if I address a student by saying, “Thanks, Hermione,” then everyone knows that this particular student tends to answer all the questions. The purpose of referencing another text is to provide great depth to the current work by tapping into a source that should be well-known by the audience. “Take a Break” contains a big chunk of references to Macbeth, so this was a good place to discuss “intertextuality,” which I learned about by reading the excellent book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. ![]()
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