Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2018. 384 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8135-9030-1; $19.90 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8135-9029-5.
This collection of history-focused essays is in part inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s appeal, “I want the historians to take [Hamilton] seriously” (qtd on 6). In their introduction, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter validate Miranda’s assertion that his smash-hit musical is worthy of scholarly examination by pointing out, “the effect of popular culture on the public mind is a matter of keen interest for historians” (9). The essays span a range of topics, from the historical figures who appear as characters in Hamilton to the ways in which super-fans engage with the musical and its creator through social media. Some essays are quite critical of the musical and some more celebratory, but all agree that Hamilton has influenced the cultural landscape of US history and art in ways worthy of scholarly study. The chapters are largely written by scholars who specialize in US history, with three chapters written by theatre and performance scholars.
The book is divided into three sections, titled “The Script,” “The Stage,” and “The Audience.” ...
The five chapters in “The Script” address Hamilton’s historical inaccuracies, representation of race and gender, and nontraditional casting. ...
Joseph M. Adelman acknowledges the validity of some of the criticism leveled at Hamilton’s historical oversights, but reads the musical not as a scholarly history, but a people’s history, or, “retellings of the past that come from among the American people rather than from professional historians” (279). ...
Some individual chapters will be especially useful for theatre and performance studies scholars. Wollman contributes a clear understanding of Broadway history for seminars on musical theatre, Brian Herrera’s chapter is important reading for courses on Latinx performance, and Patricia Herrera has much to offer courses on US identity and culture. At times the organization of the book is confusing; it is hard to see the common threads in each of the three sections, and there is a fair amount of repetition, including statistics about the musical, quotations from secondary scholars about Hamilton, and even arguments. Nevertheless, fans of the musical will appreciate this opportunity to approach it from an academic perspective, and educators will find it productive to include particular chapters on their syllabi.
Lindsey Mantoan. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 33, 1 (2018), 140–142.
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