Hamilton Themes

Midway through Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash-hit musical Hamilton, the titular character lays out his lifelong goal: Alexander Hamilton is all in “for a strong central democracy.” As Hamilton tries to create new institutions across state lines and ideological divides, he embraces collaboration as a necessary part of political life in the early United States. Though the American Revolution seems inevitable in retrospect, Hamilton asks audiences to look closer, to notice that each military tactic, each…

As important generals and politicians during the years of the American Revolution, the main characters in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton are aware that their actions will be judged by the annals of history—indeed, George Washington sings an entire song called “History Has Its Eyes on You.” But even though the most dramatic battles and duels have been written about to no end, the musical still makes clear the gap between lived experience and the way…

One line in Hamilton always gets an especially lengthy round of applause: “immigrants,” the French Marquis de Lafayette sings to his Caribbean-born friend Alexander Hamilton, “we get the job done.” Hamilton constantly emphasizes that immigration is essential to the United States’ success. The musical’s composer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, was the child of an immigrant from Puerto Rico, and he immediately identified with Hamilton as a striver, someone hoping to reinvent himself in a foreign land…

Honor is one of the most important values for all of the characters in Hamilton. From the very first moments of the show, Alexander Hamilton is obsessed with his reputation. “All I have is my honor,” he tells his wife Eliza in their courtship; later, he and nemesis Aaron Burr share a rare moment of commiseration that when it came time to name a nearby street, nobody chose either one of them as the…