Sermons in Stones

What is a composer to do when his subject’s most dramatic actions were frequently . . . the writing of political pamphlets? Not exactly nail-biting action, right? “The Farmer Refuted” is a pamphlet Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1775 in response to a Tory named Samuel Seabury who had written a pamphlet of his own, under the nom de plume “A. W. Farmer”–A. Westchester Farmer, get it?–arguing for loyalty to the crown. Duelling pamphlets, the blogs of the day. Hot stuff. So Miranda moves it to a few years later, makes it an in-person debate, and with amazing contrapuntal wordplay, interposes the two men’s arguments to make a very funny duelling duet. Seabury gets the first word, then repeats his argument, while Hamilton now uses Seabury’s own words to counter him.

Seabury:                                 {Hamilton:}

Heed not the rabble              {He’d have you all unravel at the}
Who scream                          {Sound of screams, but the}
Revolution, they                    {Revolution is coming}

Have not your interests       {The have-nots are gonna win this}
At heart . . .                             {It’s hard to listen to you with a straight face . . .}

We see Burr trying unsuccessfully to tamp down Hamilton and Co.’s open rebelliousness; we also see Hamilton’s belligerence, even arrogance, but because he’s so funny, we’re on his side–also, we get the feeling that if people had heeded Burr’s advice, the revolution would never have happened and we’d be fussing over the Duchess of Cambridge to this day. Oh wait, we are. Well, anyway, Hamilton wins the crowd with his charm and wit. And clever repartee is even better when carried out in clever rhyme and assonance, so check this out:

Seabury:                                                       {Hamilton:}

This Congress does not speak for me
.                                                                       {My dog speaks more eloquently than thee}
They’re playing a dangerous game          {Though strangely, your mange is the same . . .}

“Farmer Refuted” delivers one of my favorite lines: when Seabury says, “I pray the king shows you his mercy,” Hamilton cries “Is he in Jersey?” I assume, though I haven’t seen it staged yet, that he looks around in mock alarm as he does.

Even in the 1770s, rich people went slumming. So says Aaron Burr, and why should we doubt it? Major General Philip Schuyler’s daughters are rich, but they want to be “downtown . . . at the college,” where things are hopping.

We’ve met Hamilton and Burr and each has his musical signature; now we meet the two other main characters with signatures, Eliza and Angelica Schuyler. (Eliza’s signature gets on my nerves, one of the reasons it took me a long time to warm to this song, which I have since come to love.) Their sister, Peggy, is hardly heard of after this song, but the actor will return in Act II as the third important woman in the story, Maria Reynolds–one of the ways doubling of roles enhances themes and characters. When Eliza, Angelica, and Maria declare “I loved him” in “Alexander Hamilton,” the opening song, we’re hearing from the three actors who play the Schuyler sisters.

The star here is Angelica. Peggy is nervous, Eliza is curious, but Angelica is “looking for a mind at work” (a shout-out to The West Wing? Friends who are fans of the show say  Hamilton alludes to it frequently). She’s got a pretty sharp mind herself, and like intellectual women of many times and places, she has to push back against men who want to reduce her to an object of their desire.

Eliza: Angelica, remind me what we’re looking for . . .
All of the men on stage: She’s looking for me!

Burr tries some lines:

Burr: Excuse me, miss, I know it’s not funny
But your perfume smells like your daddy’s got money
Why you slummin’ in the city in your fancy heels
You searchin’ for an urchin who can give you ideals?

Angelica: Burr, you disgust me

Burr: Ah, so you’ve discussed me
I’m a trust fund, baby, you can trust me!

His finesse at turning rejection into potential is impressive (“So you’ve discussed me”), but she’s more than a match for him, and brings the topic back to what matters to her. She’s been reading “Common Sense,” as a revolutionary should, with the result that this is the way men regard her: “I’m intense or I’m insane.” She doesn’t care. Nothing intimidates Angelica, including the most prominent men of the day. As I said, it took awhile for this song to grow on me, but these were lines I loved the first time I heard them:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”
And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!

Was she or any influential woman of the time really that outspoken about full equality? Before this is all through I may be reduced to reading the letters of Angelica Schuyler Church, and other women of the revolutionary era, just to find out. Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband,

remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation,

but when, a few months later, the Declaration of Independence was signed without including a word about women, and then the constitution was ratified without guaranteeing women “voice or Representation,” she did not make good on her threat.

On the Sunday after Inauguration Day, when many folks in my congregation (and I) were acutely afraid of the ways our democracy was already under siege, I began my sermon with Eliza’s frequently-repeated words, “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now!” For me, one of the greatest sources of hope at a grim time is to look at history and realize that they, too, were afraid. They didn’t know how it would all end. We still don’t; the American experiment could end here, now, after only 240 years; but it gives me some hope to remember that to the colonists, things looked very uncertain in the 1770s, and they prevailed. And what Miranda imagines here is that they also found joy and purpose in being alive at such a crossroads. Maybe it is how he feels himself, despite–or because of?–the racial turmoil of the 21st century United States. The play opened on Off-Broadway in 2015, six months after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the rise of Black Lives Matter; when, in “My Shot,” Hamilton says, “This is not a moment, it’s the movement / Where all the hungriest brothers with something to prove went,” he’s explicitly quoting a BLM slogan.

I think that like the Schuyler sisters, we are lucky to be alive right now, when our country teeters between disaster and possibility, and so what we do matters intensely.

The challenge of writing about a historical event is to make the audience feel what people felt before the event had reached the conclusion we all know about. During the American Revolution, no one knew how it would come out–though there were long periods in which the only outcome that seemed possible was for the revolution to fail. Hamilton will take us into those moments, too, with its scenes from the front a little later on. In this song, the whole project still seems like a wild, necessary dream, the kind of thing that young, idealistic people talk about in bars, getting louder and louder, building on each other’s commitment, working themselves up to a daring and dangerous act, which is what revolution was in New York City in 1776. “My Shot” is their anthem, filtered through one character. Hamilton knows this could get him killed, but he’s willing, he knows he’s ready despite having none of the prerequisites that a class-conscious society demands, and he’s giddy with the determination to make his life count for something.

I love the multiple meanings of “take a shot”: with Lafayette’s verse, it means fire a gun, with Mulligan’s it means make an effort, and with Laurens’s it means have a drink. All three intertwine throughout the song–maybe even more in the staging, which offers the option of people downing a drink when the word is said (I’ll have to watch for that). And of course, the defiant refrain foreshadows Hamilton’s decision, in the final duel, to do exactly that–throw away his shot–or would firing straight at Burr been throwing away his shot? The unambiguous dictionary definition is complexified* by the metaphorical definition. We’ll hear more on that when we get to each of the three duels: Laurens and Charles Lee’s, Philip Hamilton and George Eacker’s, and Alexander Hamilton and Burr’s.

In any case, it is Hamilton’s theme: literally his musical motif (along with the sung signature of his name), rat-a-tatted each time Burr repeats “How does a bastard, orphan . . . ” and its variants; the core of his personality; the summation of his drive and the root of his phenomenal success. Miranda could have blamed Hamilton’s most foolish decisions on it, as well, but he doesn’t. It’s plausible to conclude that Hamilton’s determination to get the most out of life might have been self-destructive as well as creative, but Miranda implicitly argues against drawing this conclusion by omitting the oft-repeated “not throwing away my shot” from the moment Hamilton plunges into his disastrous affair (“Say No To This”) or the moment he disastrously reveals it (“Hurricane”).

Not that his declaration here is entirely positive. It’s a mix of ego (“Don’t be shocked when your history book mentions me . . . . eventually you’ll see my ascendancy”) and purer motives (“You want Britain keep shittin’ on us endlessly? . . . . I will lay down my life if it sets us free”). But what strikes me most is the way his bravado is shot through with intelligence and forethought. He’s “thinkin’ past tomorrow”:

And? If we win our independence?
Is that a guarantee of freedom for our descendants?
Or will the blood we shed begin an endless
Cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants?
I know the action in the street is excitin’
But Jesus, between all the bleedin’ ‘n fightin’
I’ve been readin’ ‘n writin’
We need to handle our financial situation
Are we a nation of states? What’s the state of our nation?

The lyrics and the drive of the music argue that it’s the combination of passion and careful thought that made the revolution a success, made it more than a brawl that a bunch of hotheads started and unexpectedly won. The “great man theory of history” is all over the play, but despite the limitations of that worldview, it’s true that Hamilton and a few other disciplined leaders were essential in getting us through the war and establishing a lasting government. And at least Miranda has broadened “great man” to include a tailor’s apprentice who would survive his work as a spy and go back to a quiet postwar life as a tailor, proudly telling his war stories to the people gathered in his shop.

The part of the song where I choke up with unexpected patriotism is when Laurens leads the people in singing, “Rise up.”

Rise up!
When you’re living on your knees, you rise up
Tell your brother that he’s gotta rise up
Tell your sister that she’s gotta rise up

Just try to join the ensemble without feeling a rush of emotion as you sing:

When are these colonies gonna rise up?
When are these colonies gonna rise up?
When are these colonies gonna rise up?
When are these colonies gonna rise up, rise up?

Has there ever been a time in our history when these words were not appropriate?

I don’t know how to say all that I want to say about this song, so I’ll just stop here. All I know is, every time “My Shot” reaches its end, every time, I say out loud, to the empty car or whoever’s around, “That is such a great song.”

*Spellcheck says this isn’t a word. I like it anyway.