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Act 1: The Story of Tonight
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hamilton, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Collaboration, Disagreement, and Democracy
Stories vs. History
Ambition and Mortality
Immigration and Diversity of Influence
Honor
Summary
Analysis
The scene shifts to downtown New York City, where lovely Eliza Schuyler is joined by her older sister (the brilliant Angelica) and her grumpy younger sister (Peggy). In a bouncy musical number, “The Schuyler Sisters” sing about how they are supposed to marry wealthy men, but they are actually more interested in revolutionary politics than in getting rich.
In addition to being historically accurate, Miranda’s choice to present the Schuyler sisters as a trio sets them up as a classic girl group (like modern-day Destiny’s Child or The Supremes). Right away, audiences see that both Angelica and Eliza are interested in being part of a historical moment that they feel excluded from because of their gender.
Themes
In particular, Angelica is desperate to make an impact on the war effort: she boasts of reading Thomas Paine’s crucial treatise Common Sense and complains that Thomas Jefferson left women out of the Declaration of Independence. As the song comes to a close, the three sisters celebrate New York as “the greatest city in the world,” reflecting how “lucky they are to be alive right now.”
Thomas Paine, one of the more radical thinkers in the Revolutionary era, was also an advocate for women’s rights (unlike Jefferson). But even as the song hints at complex political textures, it also acts as an ode to New York City. Indeed, at the show’s opening night party, Miranda created a New York playlist, which included everything from standards like “New York, New York” to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” to “The Schuyler Sisters.”
Themes
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