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smt 12 (2) pp. 213–221 Intellect Limited 2018
Studies in Musical Theatre
Volume 12 Number 2
© 2018 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/smt.12.2.213_1
www.intellectbooks.com  213
ABSTRACT
‘I really got my Les Miz on in this score, like being really smart about where to reintroduce
a theme’, noted Lin-Manuel Miranda soon after Hamilton’s off-Broadway
opening in early 2015. Indeed, both in its techniques of thematic recurrence and
in its continuous musicalization, Miranda’s approach follows his acknowledged
model. Yet, Les Misérables more deeply pervades Hamilton’s dramaturgy than
even Miranda has noted, as can be seen in several remarkable parallels between
plot, characters and dramatic structure. Taken together, these and other analogies
between the shows suggest that Hamilton retraces the dramatic and emotional
arcs of Les Misérables, which Miranda has described as one member of the ‘Holy
Trinity’ of Broadway shows.
In his influential book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,
Bernard Bailyn demonstrated how the colonists revolted not as ‘Americans’
but as British citizens in thought and expression: ‘the configuration of ideas
and attitudes [of] the Revolutionary ideology’, wrote Bailyn, ‘could be found
intact as far back as the 1730’s’ (1967: xi). Likewise, the so-called Hamilton
Revolution (Miranda and McCarter 2016) comes from a writer with a strong
identification with, and expressive fluency in, Broadway traditions dating from
decades earlier. That is, Miranda writes not in revolt against Broadway but as
one wholly embedded within it. As Jeremy McCarter writes, when Miranda
wrote Hamilton, ‘he wasn’t just listening to their [earlier writers’] cast albums
anymore: He was listening to his actual forebears’(Miranda and McCarter 2016:
172, original emphasis). As Elizabeth Wollman has put it, the musical is ‘more
evolutionary’ than ‘revolutionary’ and ‘pushes the Broadway musical forward
KEYWORDS
adaptation
Bechdel test
Horatio Alger
Hamilton
Les Misérables
Lin-Manuel Miranda
JEFFREY MAGEE
University of Illinois
Miranda’s Les Miz
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214   Studies in Musical Theatre
in part by never forgetting its connection to the past’ (Wollman in Romano
and Potter 2018: 216).
Chief among those connections is Les Misérables (1987; hereafter Les Miz),
a show Miranda has referred to as one of the ‘Holy Trinity’that includes Cats
(1982) and Phantom of the Opera (1988). ‘I really got my Les Miz on in this
score’, he noted soon after Hamilton’s off-Broadway opening in early 2015
(Mead 2015). Indeed, in its techniques of thematic recurrence, its continuous
musicalization, its historical subject and its focus ‘on basic human desires for
freedom and forgiveness’, Miranda’s approach not only pays homage to his
acknowledged model: I would argue that Hamilton’s reuse of a stock of characters
and scenic memes originating in Les Miz invites us to view the earlier
show as structurally shadowing its successor and as a reincarnation of the
megamusical – that 1980s phenomenon, exemplified by Les Miz, that continues
to shape musicals well into the twenty-first century (see Sternfeld 2006:
1–2; 175–224). JackViertel has gone so far as to write that Hamilton is ‘a direct
descendant of Oklahoma!’ in the sense of telling a show about its own time
in a historical setting (2016: 267).Yet he asserts that the show is ‘clearly more
influenced by Les Misérables than by Rodgers and Hammerstein’ (Viertel
2016: 16).
This is more than a case of mere ‘influence’, however. Adaptation theory
is particularly useful for recognizing the import of Les Miz for Hamilton. In her
seminal Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon’s capacious definition of adaptation
as ‘an extended, deliberate announced revisitation of a particular work
of art’ may not admit the connection proposed here (Hutcheon 2006: 170).
The work more straightforwardly being adapted in Miranda’s musical is Ron
Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton (2004) – which the show’s publicity
credits as what ‘inspired’ the show.1
Yet what I am proposing is that Les
Miz gave Miranda a structural template that facilitated his choices of how to
concisely and dramatically musicalize crucial events and verbal expression in
the 731 pages of Chernow’s detailed and exhaustive narrative. Hutcheon has
written that adaptations are ‘inherently “palimpsestuous” works, haunted at
all times by their adapted texts. If we know that prior text, we always feel its
presence shadowing the one we are experiencing directly’(2006: 6). Audience
members who know Les Miz well, and there are millions, have access to its
shadowing presence in Hamilton. In that sense, Hamilton may be comparable
to the post-Beethovenian symphonies of composers such as Mendelssohn,
Berlioz, Brahms and Mahler – works that would not be possible, or at least not
the same, without their models (Bonds 1997). In specific ways, we can identify
the resonances and models from Les Miz within Hamilton.
New man, new land
An impoverished young man with no family or connections, directed by a
strong moral compass and a spirit of service to others, works hard, confronts
and overcomes adversity, achieves success and financial security. The adversity
might stem from circumstances or human adversaries; the success may
be abetted by an older male benefactor. The lines between heroes and villains
are starkly drawn. This is the Horatio Alger Myth in a nutshell, and it resonates
in both Hamilton and Les Miz. True, the source stories for both musicals
precede Alger’s popular late nineteenth-century writings, but the Alger
myth became sewn into the American psyche. What one author has called
its ‘transcendent afterlife’remains widely appealing despite augurs of its death
	 1.	 Miranda’s reliance on
Chernow has been
seen as problematic for
spinning an ‘American
immigration fantasy’,
for overemphasizing
the uniqueness
of Hamilton’s
disadvantaged
background and for
underemphasizing
his relationship to
slavery, among other
things. See Hogeland
in Romano and Potter
(2018: 25–29).
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since the 1960s (Llamon 1976: 11)2
– and may explain why, as Barack Obama
put it, ‘“Hamilton,” I’m pretty sure, is the only thing that Dick Cheney and
I agree on’ (Fabian 2016). Undoubtedly the two politicians inflect Hamilton’s
values differently, but both parties played variations on the Alger myth during
Obama’s bid for re-election in 2012 (Rooks 2012).
The widespread appeal of both Hamilton and Les Miz shows that the Alger
myth retains strong fascination, for the Alger trajectory with some modification
serves as the dramaturgical backbone of both shows. Hamilton’s opening
number offers a brisk, compelling summary of his indigent immigrant narrative
and the possibility of becoming a ‘new man’ in a ‘new land’, New York
(Miranda and McCarter 2016: 17), where he launches his career at nineteen
(‘only nineteen but my mind is older’[Miranda and McCarter 2016: 26]) – the
same number of years Valjean, likewise indigent, served in prison as ‘a slave
of the law’ (Behr 1989: 165), and the same number, too, that Philip echoes
when he announces his age in ‘Blow Us All Away’ (Miranda and McCarter
2016: 245). Like Hamilton, Valjean grasps the opportunity to become a new
man:  ‘And now let’s see/What this new world/Will do for me!’ (Behr 1989:
165). Both, following the Alger myth’s trajectory, soon benefit from association
with a wise father figure: the Bishop’s kind gesture sets Valjean on a new
path as an ‘honest man’ (Behr 1989: 166), and Washington selects Hamilton
as his  ‘right-hand man’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 65). From there,
however, much is made of the up-by-the-bootstraps, self-made-man narrative
so fundamental to the Alger myth. Valjean renounces his past and even
his name: ‘Jean Valjean is nothing now. / Another story must begin’ – and in
the next scene we see him as the owner of ‘a business of repute’ and ‘the
Mayor of this town’ (Behr 1989: 167). We witness more of Hamilton’s rise: a
self-described ‘diamond in the rough’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 26), he
urgently seeks higher education (‘an accelerated course of study’[Miranda and
McCarter 2016: 23]) and organizes a motley group of rowdy rebels into a determined
cohort of leaders. He rises even further than Valjean, of course: from
Washington’s most trusted aide, to major general and ultimately to Secretary
of the Treasury. A strong moral core marks the Alger hero, and Hamilton and
Valjean generally fit the bill – but not before they are tested, as we will see.
The wide-enough world
Both shows thrive on the friction between two antagonists, each a foil to
his counterpart; and both bring the two in regular contact. ‘We keep meeting’(Miranda
and McCarter 2016: 63), Hamilton and Burr say simultaneously
when Washington tries to introduce them to one another. ‘We meet again’
(Behr 1989: 185) says Valjean when he encounters Javert bound behind the
barricade after the rebels discovered his identity. Valjean releases him and
Javert becomes enraged and ashamed by the debt he owes to his former
captive. Hamilton’s dramaturgy adopts the Valjean–Javert template. Director
Tommy Kail makes this explicit: ‘“There’s a lot of Javert and Valjean in there”,
he says. “Les Misérables is fundamentally about someone who says,You have
to play by these rules”, and somebody else who says, “Sometimes you have to
break those rules”’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 214). The encounters build
tension to the point that one can no longer abide living in the same world
with the other, so in the end one must die. ‘There is nothing on earth that we
share, / It is eitherValjean or Javert!’(Behr 1989: 188) sings Javert before taking
his own life so that he does not have to bear the indignity of Valjean’s mercy
	 2.	 Llamon’s article takes
as its starting point
Jones (1967). A more
recent critique, like
Baraka’s focusing
on the myth’s racist
underpinning, appears
in Dalton (1995: 127–35).
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any longer. In contrast, Burr wins his duel but lives the hell thatValjean sought
to avoid through suicide: ‘He may have been the first one to die, / But I’m the
one who paid for it. […] I should’ve known / The world was wide enough for
both Hamilton and me’(Miranda and McCarter 2016: 275).
Indeed, it is the moments of empathy and compassion, even self-knowledge
and self-denial that arise from the antagonist, or between the protagonist
and his opposite, that make their conflicts so compelling. The potential
for reconciliation tantalizes the spectator and neutralizes the base tendency to
wish the worst for Burr or Javert. Valjean’s mercy and Javert’s suicide accomplish
this in Les Miz. Hamilton provides many more dramatic nodes for such
empathy: Burr’s early advice and assistance, the Hamilton–Burr camaraderie
after Hamilton’s wedding, the duet capturing their simultaneous awakening
to fatherhood (‘Theodosia’); Hamilton’s request for Burr’s advice
because ‘you’re a better lawyer than me’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 138),
and Burr’s ultimate admission that the world was ‘wide enough’: all of this
elicits our empathy for the antagonist, and our ability to envision a tolerant
and tolerable peace. No wonder Hilton Als went even further in his NewYorker
review and dubbed the Burr–Hamilton clash a ‘bromance’that comprises ‘the
most meaningful love story in “Hamilton”’(Als 2015).
The forgivable sin
Valjean’s crimes of stealing a loaf of bread and pieces of silver hover over
him throughout Les Miz and guide his actions, especially as Javert will not
let him forget the stolen bread. Hamilton commits no crime, but his adulterous
affair with Maria Reynolds taints his personal and professional activities
until his death and beyond. Hewing to the righteous Christian resonance
that pervades Les Miz, Valjean’s crimes appear as Christ-like services to a
higher cause compared to Hamilton’s sordid betrayal. Hamilton’s misguided
attempt to exonerate himself from criminal activity by publicizing the details
of the affair only serve to further expose his questionable judgment. Valjean’s
moral compass fails just once: not for the crime of which he was convicted
(the bread), but for the crime for which he was forgiven (the silver), and the
Bishop converts the lapse into a lesson learned for ‘some higher plan’, which
Valjean duly accepts (Behr 1989: 166). In contrast, Hamilton learns the wrong
lesson (he ‘comes to the wrong conclusion’, in Miranda’s words [Miranda and
McCarter 2016: 232, original emphasis]) and commits self-sabotage with the
confessional  ‘Reynolds Pamphlet’. With this publication, Hamilton ensures
permanent damage to his political ambitions (‘Never gon’ be president now’,
chant his foes Jefferson, Madison and Burr [Miranda and McCarter 2016:
234]) and to his marriage (‘You forfeit all rights to my heart. / You forfeit the
place in our bed. […] I hope that you burn’, sings Eliza while destroying all of
Alexander’s letters [Miranda and McCarter 2016: 238]).
Yet even Hamilton earns redemption within the show, as we bear witness
to the tragic death of his son; his ongoing devotion to his wife; his principled,
if punitive, public endorsement of Jefferson against Burr in the election
of 1800 (‘when all is said and all is done. / Jefferson has beliefs. Burr has none’
[Miranda and McCarter 2016: 261]) and his musical soliloquy grappling with
mortality and legacy (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 273) – thematically and
structurally analogous to Valjean’s final deathbed solo (Behr 1989: 191). In
the end, it is Eliza who redeems Alexander with her efforts to preserve his
memory: she interviews ‘every soldier’ who fought with him; with Angelica,
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she ‘tell[s] [his] story’; and she establishes an orphanage in whose children’s
eyes  ‘I see you, Alexander’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 281). Ultimately,
Hamilton stands as the more flawed protagonist but thereby more transparently
human – the show lets him off the hook by making his sexual compromise
acceptable – compared to the melodramatic marbleized figure, hallowed
by Christian self-renunciation, of Valjean. But both heroes are made more
compelling by their forgivable sins.
The righteous cause
Both are, moreover, magnified by larger social and political conflicts. The
shows give us two revolutions, two outmanned armies fighting for freedom
and democracy against a formidable opponent. A large, seething underclass
populates the Paris of Les Misérables, including prisoners, poor factory workers,
prostitutes and students – the miserable ones. The death of the populist
General Lamarque, described in the show simply as ‘the people’s man’
(Behr 1989: 178), serves as the catalyst for their uprising. The stentorian
march  ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ describes the rebels as  ‘angry’ and
as ‘slaves’ seeking ‘the right to be free’. Those who will die for the cause will
be  ‘martyrs’ (Behr 1989: 178). Like their counterparts in Hamilton, they are
scrappy (‘There’s gonna be hell to pay/At the end of the day’) and, literally,
hungry (‘There’s a hunger in the land’) (Behr 1989: 167). The opening words
of Hamilton quickly establish that the title character would be at home among
the miserable ones: ‘a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman [...]
by providence, impoverished, in squalor’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 16).
More than that, he and his newfound cronies have a passion for a righteous
cause, whose time is ripe for action, as Hamilton quickly gets his cohort to
sing together ‘I am not throwing away my shot’(Miranda and McCarter 2016:
30).The notion of martyrdom for the cause of freedom resonates with Les Miz,
too, when Hamilton raps: ‘I will lay down my life if it sets us free’ (Miranda
and McCarter 2016: 26). In both shows, the righteous cause lends the hero an
ennobling frame.
Drink with me
Wars, cinematic and staged, seem to require quiet, intimate moments of male
bonding as foils to the big battle. Consider, for a recent example, the long conversation
between Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and Private Ryan (Matt Damon) in
Saving Private Ryan before the film’s final violent conflict. Alcohol helps, as both
Les Miz and Hamilton recognize. Both shows contain barroom scenes that evoke
similar textures of feeling. Stentorian appeals to the cause – ‘Have you asked
of yourselves / What’s the price you might pay?’(Behr 1989: 178) and ‘I am not
throwing away my shot’ (Miranda and McCarter 2016: 35) – mix with backslapping
banter about heterosexual romantic achievement – ‘I am agog! / I am
aghast! / Is Marius in love at last?’ (Behr 1989: 178) and ‘Well, I heard / You’ve
got a special someone on the side, Burr’(Miranda and McCarter 2016: 87). Both
shows portray two pre-battle barroom gatherings in song: Les Miz’s ‘The Red
and the Black’and ‘Drink with Me’, and Hamilton’s ‘The Story of Tonight’and its
reprise. Such scenes have unmistakable links to the operatic brindisi, or drinking
song, going back to the eighteenth century and particularly popular in nineteenth-century
Italian opera. In both shows, the drinking song reinforces male
camaraderie and offers a peaceful contrast to the ensuing battle.
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	 3.	 Schönberg begins to
speak at 1:53 at www.
youtube.com/watc
h?v=y6VeMbd9RAY.
	 4.	 Miranda noted that the
rap’s recapitulation ‘is
almost cruel of me,
but God it’s effective’
(Miranda and McCarter
2016: 246, n. 5).
Master of the house
Selfish, scheming and not a little buffoonish: both Les Miz and Hamilton
feature grasping male characters who comment on, and attempt to manipulate,
the action in ways that provide comic relief. Monsieur Thénardier and
King George fill these roles, and not coincidentally, they both play British
stereotypes familiar to the American imagination: the Cockney and the Fop.
So compelling are these characters that we hardly note our suspension of
disbelief in accepting that a French tavern owner’s voice so often resonates
with lower-class London accents, and that a British royal is the only white
principal in a musical dramatization of the American Revolution. One other
minor character, Samuel Seabury, is also white. Tellingly, he is a Tory resisting
the revolutionary tide. It is telling, too, that Thénardier’s comedy is an
invention not of Hugo but a deliberate conceit of Boublil and Schönberg ‘to
relax the audience’ in the midst of a dramatic,  ‘sad’ story, as Schönberg
has put it.3
Both are introduced with much fanfare.  ‘Silence! A message
from the King!’ sings the ensemble as King George arrives (Miranda and
McCarter 2016: 49). And in Les Miz, various ‘Drinkers’ sum up Thénardier’s
greedy opportunism in several musical lines leading into his long monologue
and ‘Master of the House’ (Behr 1989: 173). Moreover, that number
and ‘You’ll Be Back’ serve as musical calling cards for their respective characters
throughout the show.
The unimaginable
‘He’s aiming for Fantine-size tears’, wrote a Broadway blogger immediately
after the release of Rebecca Mead’s extended New Yorker article on Miranda
and Hamilton (Wontorek 2015). The claim simply expanded upon Miranda’s
general acknowledgment of his debt to Les Miz’s approach to thematic
recurrence, but has more specific dramatic resonance when we consider
the comparable impact of the pathetic, unnecessary and untimely deaths by
gunshot of Eponine and Philip, not to mention Fantine’s death that leaves
Cosette an orphan but safely in Valjean’s care. Both shows build sympathy
for these young characters to make their deaths all the more tragic. We have
followed Eponine’s unrequited love for Marius, her successful disruption of
an attempted robbery, her willingness to act as emissary between Marius and
Cosette, which ultimately leads to her death in Marius’s arms – after she sings
two of the show’s most affecting numbers planted early in Act 2:  ‘On My
Own’and ‘A Little Fall of Rain’. Hamilton likewise builds proprietary sympathy
for Philip before his Act 2 death, especially through Hamilton’s attachment to
him, as expressed in ‘Theodosia’ and in Philip’s charming attempts to learn
to play piano and to rap in ‘Take a Break’. Philip’s utter devotion to his father
builds through ‘Blow Us All Away’: with his misguided – but utterly understandable
as Hamilton’s son – attempt to stand up to a man who publicly
insulted his father; the touching recapitulation of his nine-year-old rap and
his fatal choice to follow his father’s advice to delope – that is, to shoot in
the air during the duel.4
All of that is followed by a death scene, ‘Stay Alive’,
that rivals Eponine’s in its quiet musical intimacy. It even includes a duet with
an unfinished final phrase signalling the moment of death (Eponine’s ‘And
rain will make the flowers…’ [Behr 1989: 184] and Philip’s ‘Un deux trois…’
[Miranda and McCarter 2016: 249]).
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Almost failing the Bechdel test
‘One, it has to have at least two women in it […] who, two, talk to each
other about, three, something besides a man’. In two panels of a cartoon
entitled  ‘The Rule’, Alison Bechdel, with credit to Liz Wallace, articulated
what has become known as the Bechdel Test for films (Bechdel 1986: 22). Its
popularity has grown to encompass all fictional media, drawing wider scrutiny
to the representation of women on stage and screen. Both Hamilton and
Les Miz nearly fail the test, but not quite. In Les Miz, in a stretch, we might
point to the brief conversation between Mme. Thenardier and Young Cosette
(Behr 1989: 172) in which the tavern owner scolds her ward. As Stacy Wolf
points out in this issue, Hamilton passed the test by virtue of the number ‘The
Schuyler Sisters’, which introduces Eliza, Angelica and Peggy out on the town
in New York (Wolf 2018: 170). Eliza and Angelica sing about the city and the
rise of revolutionary fervour (‘look around, look around, / the revolution’s
happening in NewYork’, Miranda and McCarter 2016: 43) while Peggy worries
about disobeying their father’s wishes (‘Daddy said to be home by sundown’,
Miranda and McCarter 2016: 42).
The larger issue is how the shows portray their female characters.Although
the parts are perennially attractive to female performers, they tend to represent
recognizable types, all defined chiefly by their relationship with children
or men, or both. Both shows have even elicited a similar critique by Stacy Wolf.
She notes the female stereotypes of Les Miz: ‘the mother who sacrifices herself
to the death [Fantine], the two women who love the same man [Cosette and
Eponine], and the woman who desires a man in a different class [Eponine]’
(Wolf 2012). In Hamilton, ‘the women are lumped together and only exist to
serve the romance plot(s) of the musical’because Angelia, Eliza and Maria all
chant together a single line: ‘Me? I loved him’(Wolf 2018: 169).
In the end, then, the three [principal] women in the musical occupy the
most conventional and stereotypical roles – muse, wife, whore – which is
all the more troubling since Hamilton goes such a long way to dismantle
stereotypes of race and masculinity.
(Wolf 2018: 177)
As Wollman has put it, ‘the musical fails to challenge gendered assumptions
buried deep in traditional narrative, contemporary commercial staging,
and modern pop’(Wollman in Romano and Potter 2018: 216). If Hamilton fails
its women, part of the explanation might be that it drew on Les Miz uncritically.
All of these similarities cannot conceal obvious differences between the
shows: the race-conscious casting of Hamilton5
and the race-blind (but mostly
white) casting of Les Misérables; the linguistic virtuosity of Hamilton’s hip hop
vs the archaic and rather stilted religiosity of Les Miz’s diction; Hamilton’s rap
and R&B-driven musical style vs Les Miz’s quasi-operatic grandiloquence; and
Hamilton’s metatheatrical emphasis on storytelling, historical narrative and the
passage of time, all lacking in Les Miz.6
Yet Hamilton seems to be designed to
trigger the same kinds of emotional responses through comparable characters,
relationships, scenes and numbers, woven together by continuous musicalization
and webs of recurring motifs and themes. In that sense, we may view the
Hamilton ‘revolution’ as building, reverently and adaptively, from a work that
appears to be its principal model.
	 5.	 The original
production’s ‘race-
conscious’
and ‘compositional’
casting, and its impact,
have been the subject
of much commentary
and trenchant analysis
(See Monteiro 2016;
Herrera 2017; and
Herrera in Romano and
Potter 2018: 229–34).
	 6.	 It may be that even
Hamilton’s emphasis
on storytelling – and
how, by whom and to
whom stories are told
– has seeds in Les Miz,
as when Valjean tells
Marius his ‘story […]
Of slavery and shame/
That you alone [and
not Cosette] must
know’ (Behr 1989: 189),
and when Valjean
offers another story
to Cosette: ‘my last
confession […] a story/
Of those who always
loved you’ (Behr 1989:
191).
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Miranda’s Les Miz
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Magee, J. (2018), ‘Miranda’s Les Miz’, Studies in Musical Theatre, 12:2,
pp. 213–221, doi: 10.1386/smt.12.2.213_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Jeffrey Magee is professor and director of the School of Music at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Uncrowned King
of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz, which won the Society for
American Music’s Irving Lowens Book Award, and Irving Berlin’s American
Musical Theater, both published by Oxford University Press. He is currently
working on another book for Oxford titled Gypsy and the American Dream.
Contact: School of Music, University of Illinois, 1114 W. Nevada, Urbana, IL
61822, USA.
E-mail: jmag@illinois.edu
Jeffrey Magee has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.