Hamilton and Time

At first, when I first started reading Hamilton, I wondered—how does this relate to time? But as I continued to read, it became so apparent how full of time the entire thing was. In reading the lyrics and listening to the music, time seems to be an inescapable theme—imbued not into the lyrics, Hamilton’s musings on his life, Burr’s philosophy, Washington’s legacy, but the literal timing and pacing of the words. The time itself for each song has an impact on the audience’s perception. Songs written in different time signatures evoke different feelings and reflections, such as a rap in 7/8 time creating a feeling of chaos. 

            There were several explorations of time in the show I found compelling, the first of which was the contrasting approaches to time between Burr and Hamilton. Hamilton writes “like he’s running out of time”, while Burr prefers to “wait for it”. Burr constantly lies in wait, evaluating, assessing, not quite frozen. Hamilton, however, rushes through and lives in a constant blur of activity. But in the song “The World Was Wide Enough”, these two philosophies come to a head. The recurring auditory motif of the clock is heard as the rules are once again touched upon, but as companions to Burr’s recounting of the story. For once, when faced with true fear, Burr decides he can’t wait for it anymore. And he “paid for it”. And for once, Hamilton pauses in his final moments, to wait and reflect. Here, the other time-related question arises: “Legacy. What is a Legacy?/ It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see./ I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song/ someone else will sing for me./ America, you great unfinished symphony…” But still, in a literal sense, Hamilton’s time is up. He will die. But how does his time impact others’ time?

            The other exploration of time—the thing Hamilton obsesses over—is legacy. In our discussions on the experience of time and how we conceptualize time, we’ve touched on how the past affects the future. Hamilton attempts to lay the foundation for the future he wants, even though as he stands in front of death, he knows that he’ll never experience it as his present—only as a future. However, I think we’ve focused on the reverse a lot, as well—how the future impacts our past. In this case, we see the intermingling of the future and past in the creation of Hamilton. The show’s inspiration is history, but Miranda uses tools from the future (our present) to communicate the present. In Hamilton, it truly feels like time is being experienced all at once—Hamilton’s story is our story, familiar and unfamiliar—just as we would be to him.

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