The promised Hamilton questions:
1. Why do so many people love George? Their screams when he showed up for the first time were crazy. Is it the actor or character they are screaming for?
2. Why is Samuel Seabury and “Farmer Refuted” so underrated? This may be the best character and song, yet no one seems to talk about him and it…
3. Why do so many people obsessively love Thomas? I find him rather annoying and mean.
4. What’s up with the Hamilton and Laurens ‘more than friends’ stuff? How can anyone think of this?! And in the comments of some videos I see there is even fan fiction. With all my respect, WHAT?! I remember reading a few letters between both of them and the way Hamilton wrote was more intimate than one would expect, but I mean, that you are very close with a friend who happens to be the same gender, doesn’t mean you have a relationship with him! And let’s not forget Maria! If he ‘wasn’t into female’, why would he let Maria take advantage of him?! Why would he have so many children with Elizabeth?! There is something really messed up here.
1. I’m guessing because of the actor, Jonathan Groff, known for appearing on Glee and Mindhunter, and voice work in Frozen.
2. A great character sometimes takes a hit in audience esteem by dint of being a foil for the protagonist.
3. (Corollary to 2): A great character is sometimes great because they represent something (e.g. meanness) really well.
4. You’re right, a good many behaviors from other times or places could be misconstrued by looking at them through the lens of our current geographical-cultural moment. It’s possible that male intimacy was on a spectrum that parts of were acknowledged only in private letters, and we’re the ones retrospectively labeling it with a category that went unnamed (and unacknowledged) at the time. That kind of thing is always a risk in cross-cultural and cross-historical representation.