i think reading this quote is the first time i’ve really registered the fact that the characters in hamilton aren’t based on their historical counterpoints as people, they’re based on the words they left behind

jefferson is obviously the best example of this because his musical character so clearly doesn’t match up to contemporary descriptions of him as shy, awkward, etc, but equally as clearly DOES match up to the character you would create of him if you only had his words–smooth, cocky, showy.

this is also super important for understanding musical burr, i think: i’ve seen people talk about how hard it is to match historical burr (lights himself on fire, constantly broke, clearly a fucking mess) with musical burr, who’s smooth-talking and put-together and in every way a counterpoint to hamilton’s messy brashness. but lmm literally explains their characters in terms of their writing: “hamilton left behind 27 volumes of written work, burr left behind less that two. and i think that sort of tells you everything you need to know.” (x) that’s fundamentally what their characters are based on.

for this show that’s so fundamentally about the ways we tell stories and the way we all are remembered–and just as fundamentally about words and the power of language–i just think it’s a really fascinating choice to create characters out of words, not just on the craft level but on a greater meta level wrt what we leave behind