Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized eliza hamilton, hamilton, history 0 Comments

At this point on stage, Hamilton appears next to Eliza, much to her happiness and amazement, as if this is the moment of her death. In fact, after the final note fades, the last sound heard is Eliza’s gasp—perhaps her last breath, or her joy at her dying vision of Alexander waiting for her—as the theater goes dark.

By the end of the show, the title, Hamilton, refers to Eliza Hamilton as much as Alexander Hamilton. It opened by describing Alexander’s birth, so it’s appropriate for it to end with the death of Eliza, the one who told so much of both of their stories.

As the New Yorker describes it: ‘In the show’s final moment, he motions Eliza to the lip of the stage, where she steps beyond him and takes the light. The last image we see is of her awestruck face, gazing out into some blissful beyond.‘ I’m not crying, you’re crying.

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In this song, Eliza becomes the extradiegetic narrator (lit. narrating from outside the world of the story). So in a way, she is literally looking out into the theater and seeing the crowds of people that have come to see and hear her and her husband’s story in this amazing play that’s being performed for packed audiences and turning the entire world of theater on its head. THEY’RE TELLING YOUR STORY. YOU MADE IT, GIRL, YOU MADE IT.

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized eliza hamilton, hamilton, history 0 Comments

“Does the fact that Hamilton’s widow lived fifty years after his death make the tragedy worse?”

Chernow: “Yes, and with the added poignancy that at the time of Hamilton’s death, seven of their eight children were also still alive, the eighth having died in a duel three years earlier. One of the things that I was most at pains to do was to edit Eliza Hamilton back into the story, because she tried so hard to edit herself out. She ran the New York Orphan Asylum Society for several decades. I dug out all the records, and she wasn’t just lending her name to it — she was really running it — dealing with the finance committee, arbitrating disputes — and it frustrated me that there was this missing founding mother. She is usually mentioned as a weak, religious, weepy, neurasthenic woman — as if she hadn’t done anything. In fact, she was a strong, gutsy lady who was still mentally sharp and active until the end of her life.”