The Story of Tonight (Reprise)

Laurens dies before the second act, so he actually doesn’t live to see their glory.

This is more than just a small foreshadowing of the inevitable death of Laurens. The first time “The Story of Tonight” is sung, Alexander starts it off. He sings the line “I may not live to see our glory” all alone. It isn’t until he finishes the line that the rest of the revolutionary set repeat his words. Here, in the reprise, Laurens does the exact same thing. He sings this line alone. The fact that Alexander and Laurens are the only two to sing this line on their own foreshadows their deaths. Since no one else sings this line on their own it bears more weight when Hamilton and Laurens do sing it.

Laurens is doing his duty as best man and teasing Hamilton, saying that it’s a miracle any decent girl would fall for him. In the original Broadway staging, Mulligan continues on this theme by gesturing to Hamilton’s “small” stature during this line.

The lyrics here also echo a more lighthearted part of Les Miserables, a scene in “Red and Black,” with Hamilton taking the role of Marius:

I am agog!
I am aghast!
Is Marius in love at last?
I’ve never heard him ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’
You talk of battles to be won
And here he comes like Don Juan
It’s better than an opera!

In both cases, a room full of revolutionaries comically bemoan the “loss” of one of their own to the love of a woman.

A reference to Martha Washington’s cat, as noted in “A Winter’s Ball.” As before, “tomcat” is slang for a sexually promiscuous man, referring to Hamilton’s reputation as a ladies' man.

In actuality, Hamilton was the last of the four friends to get married.

Hercules Mulligan had married his own Elizabeth, one Elizabeth Sanders, in 1773. She was the niece of a prominent British admiral, which helped the couple to stay friendly with the British and avoid suspicion during his later 007 period.

Lafayette got married in 1774, at the age of 16, to Marie Adrienne Francoise de Noailles—a relative of the king. The connection was arranged as an alliance of two powerful families, but by all accounts the two were very happy and deeply affectionate towards each other. By this time (1780), they had already had two children: a daughter, Anastasie, and a son, Georges Washington de Lafayette, named for Lafayette’s mentor.

John Laurens had a shotgun marriage to Martha Manning while studying abroad in Europe. They married in late 1776, and by 1777, Laurens had returned to America to fight in the Revolution. His wife was still pregnant at the time. He would never see her again, and never meet his daughter.

Hamilton was so late to get married, when he bashfully told Laurens about his upcoming wedding, he wrote that he was “becoming a benedict,” a Shakespearean idiom that meant a longtime bachelor was finally getting married.

This is a line that is repeated from “The Story Of Tonight” which has an ironic meaning here. Hamilton was the last of the four friends to get married. Hercules Mulligan got married in 1773. Lafayette followed in 1774. John Laurens married second last in 1776.

The friends used this line to describe the freedom of America in the aformentioned song. This time, they are joking around, because they are at a wedding, and they are saying that they don’t have freedom anymore. They joke that they lost their freedom because of their wives, which is confirmed in the second next line, “Something you will never see again.”

Hamilton, in his letter to Laurens announcing his engagement:

Next fall completes my doom. I give up my liberty to Miss Schuyler.

In case you forgot from three songs ago, “if you can marry a sister, you’re rich, son.”

Mulligan is the one saying this line, because both Laurens and Lafayette were already wealthy.

At first it was Hamilton calling Burr “sir” – the reversal of who is saying it shows the reversal of their status, of who must defer to whom now. It also serves as a reference to the earlier song “Aaron Burr, Sir.”

This line originally called forward to Angelica’s “Congratulations,” which was dropped from the show before it reached Broadway. Here we have Burr, about as cordial as we ever see him in the show, offering sincere congratulations to Hamilton for his marriage, while the latter instance sees Angelica come all the way from London to congratulate Hamilton on ruining it.

The same invitation they extended him in “Aaron Burr, Sir,” asking him to “give us a verse, drop some knowledge.”

The line demonstrates that while these revolutionaries may dislike Burr personally, they still admire his intelligence and welcome him as an ally.

Burr always holds himself back, sets himself apart. In that way, this line can be read as his peers judging Burr for trying to act more mature than them and refusing to join in with their reindeer rapping games. In “Aaron Burr, Sir,” he joined in only to purposefully derail them, and they practically booed him off the stage. Here, he neatly ignores the invitation to participate, but Lafayette isn’t fooled.

Metaphorically, this song and these characters' trading of verses is a way to show their commitment to each other and to the cause of freedom. In refusing to play along, Burr is holding back his friendship and his commitment to the revolution, which renders him untrustworthy in the eyes of Lafayette, his friends, and the audience.

Burr was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel on June 27, 1777, at the tender age of 21. Hamilton’s wedding was nearly 4 years later, on December 14, 1780. However, the musical sets the wedding before the Battle of Monmouth, so Burr’s commission is both recent and still active.

This line illustrates how Hamilton will never be satisfied with what he has, something that was just discussed thoroughly in the previous song.

The verb “manning” here is used here with a heavy dose of sarcasm. The word is usually associated with military posts (“man your battle stations”), but is here followed with the almost paltry “George’s journal.” Alexander is making a self-deprecating statement on how pathetic his role handling Washington’s correspondence is to the revolutionary effort.

Sondheim also rhymes “colonel” and “journal” in “Soldiers' Gossip” from the musical Passion. In an interview about his annotated lyrics collection Look I Made a Hat, Sondheim said that he takes a particular pleasure in words that are dissimilar on paper but rhyme when spoken, because they engage the listener more.

Miranda has rather exuberantly acknowledged Sondheim’s influence on him in the past.

Yet again, we see the differences between Ham and Burr. Burr sees his command as a position of prestige, to be sure, but would rather have the political capital that comes with being Washington’s right hand man. Burr’s dearest desire, as we learn later, is to be “in the room where it happens"—and this is a character moment that supports that reveal.

Hamilton, on the other hand, hates being behind the front. Even after getting married, he still wants to fight—and maybe even die—for his country; anything to elevate his status, in this world or the next.

“Indispensable” may be a reference to George Washington’s Indispensable Men, the only book focused on Washington’s aides-de-camp.

Washington, who did not have much formal schooling, made the smart choice many politicians do—he surrounded himself with people who were just as smart or even smarter than him.

Washington recognized Hamilton’s talents and made use of them; as the General told Congress, he needed “persons who can think for me, as well as execute orders.” Hamilton could seamlessly interpret Washington’s commands, put them into words, and fill in the necessary blanks. And he could do it quickly; Washington’s staff sometimes sent out 100 letters a day.

This kicks off the third part of the song, with the instrumentation reprising the music heard in the opening of “Aaron Burr, Sir.” This motif is also repeated a number of times: at the beginning of “Non-Stop”, in “The Election of 1800 and lastly, in a much sadder tone, in “The World Was Wide Enough.”. This musical theme underscores many one-on-one interactions between Burr and Hamilton.

A humorous line coming from Laurens, who neglected to mention to Hamilton that he was married. Hamilton only found out when he came across letters from Laurens’s wife, Martha Manning, well over a year into their friendship.

Laurens and Lafayette have hit a nerve, and Burr, recognizing the touch, plans to head out. Intriguingly, Hamilton tells him to stay, instead shooing off his friends.

Here and in “Non-Stop,” Hamilton chooses to engage with Burr over other, closer allies. He and Burr obviously have a very complicated relationship, but Hamilton never completely cuts their connection, choosing instead to argue out their differences. Unfortunately, this tendency of Hamilton’s becomes their relationship’s undoing in “The Election of 1800.”

A moment of genuine affection from Hamilton towards Burr. Hamilton wasn’t expecting Burr to attend his wedding, and is sincerely pleased by his presence (much to the chagrin of his other friends).

It’s true. Adultery was a violation of the law starting in the 1600s, and while it wasn’t as prosecuted in the 1700s, husbands often filed civil suits against their wives.

As of 2013, adultery is still illegal in 18 states. The laws are rarely enforced, except in the military.

Adulterous behavior is yet another similarity between Burr and Hamilton, along with their sharp minds, skill with the ladies, tumultuous pasts, and desire for legacy.

Burr’s lover, Theodosia, was married to James Marcus Prevost, from 1763 until his death in 1781 from wounds inflicted earlier in the war. During their 18 years of marriage, they had five children. After Prevost’s death, 35-year-old Theodosia Prevost became 25-year-old Aaron Burr’s wife on July 2, 1782.

Spoken with flat surprise by Hamilton, and without musical accompaniment.

This technique of breaking from the music when Hamilton is shocked is used again in “One Last Time” when Hamilton learns Washington is stepping down.

This line generally gets a lot of laughs in the audience, not only because of the break in the singing, but also because of the incongruity of the word choice with the tone of the song as a whole; relatively amicable though it is, the language of the conversation has remained largely formal up to this point.

Besides the comic aspect, Hamilton’s word choice also reminds us of his humble origins; he is regarded by some of his contemporaries as being out of place in high society, and his response to Burr’s revelation reminds us that his usual decorum is learned, rather than inherited.

In reality, Hamilton likely would already have pieced together who Burr meant; despite her husband’s stance, Theodosia Bartow frequently hosted Continental Army personnel, and her home briefly served as Washington’s headquarters.

Burr’s initial advice to Alexander in “Aaron Burr, Sir” was “Talk less, smile more;” here “smile more” on its own takes on a sweeter tone, appropriate for a wedding.

However, Burr isn’t just implicitly restating his advice here – he’s telling Alexander to appreciate what he has. We’ve gotten the implicit envy from Burr elsewhere in this song, with his position vs. Hamilton’s; while he seems to be congratulating him for his marriage, he may /also/ be congratulating him for his status as Washington’s right hand man and telling him to appreciate it (something we already see him doing earlier in this song).

It’s easy to see Burr asking constant questions about Hamilton, starting with the very first word of the very first song in the show. Over and over, in multiple song openings and particularly in “Non-Stop,” Burr asks “how” and “why;” it’s clear that he doesn’t have the answers, and Hamilton baffles him. But here we see the more subtle thread of Burr also baffling Hamilton. In “Non-Stop,” Hamilton repeats “I don’t understand how you stand to the side.” Even as they adopt each other’s methods, that gap of understanding remains. In the end, the fatal clash between these two men—in which their ten paces directly away from each other recapitulate the many, many times they moved in opposite directions politically and personally—may have stemmed most of all from their complete inability to comprehend and accept each other’s ways of doing things.

Hamilton is drunk as he sings this, so it’s unclear whether he’s thought this through all the way (of course, Hamilton tends to jump into things without excess deliberation, alcohol or no). The perils of adultery and even divorce ought to be obvious to Hamilton, given that because of his mother’s adultery he grew up as a “bastard.”

A question Burr is about to answer in “Wait for It.”

Usually, “see you on the other side of ___” means see you after our current ordeal has passed. But the other side is also a common way to refer to the afterlife which might acknowledge the fatal possibilities of the war. In “Meet Me Inside,” Hamilton makes it clear he is more than willing to die for his country.

He uses the same phrasing in “Yorktown” to Lafayette in reference to the war. Finally, we see him when he is about to die in “The World was Wide Enough”, he sees his dead friends and family on the other side.

However, since this is Burr and Hamilton we’re talking about, there’s some further foreshadowing wordplay here. After all, “see you on the other side of the war” could mean ‘see you after the war,’ or it could mean ‘see you on the opposing side of the war.’

Hamilton does see Burr on the other side at the moment of his death, but not from the afterlife—he’s literally facing Hamilton, ten paces in front of him, on the opposite side of their duel.

There’s another “war” on which Burr and Hamilton end up on opposite sides, too, of course—the war which Madison explains as a battle he’s “fighting for the South” in “What’d I Miss.”