That Would Be Enough

Eliza sang these lines while echoing Angelica in “The Schuyler Sisters” to refer to being alive during a time of revolution. Angelica said “look around, look around, the revolution’s happening in New York,” but “at how lucky we are to be alive right now” was Eliza’s own ecstatic line. Here it takes on its mantle as one of her principal motifs.

Sure, “The Schuyler Sisters” illustrated that Angelica is the brightest political light among these women, but Eliza also happily supported and espoused her views. As this song reiterates, Eliza supports the revolution, but she makes it known that she cares more about the human element than anything else. Being able to relish being alive and to appreciate the benefits of what you fight for is important to her. Philip is as much a part of the revolution to her as any battle.

Eliza’s comes out on stage looking visibly, if not heavily, pregnant. Alexander has been staring at her in surprise, and then says this.

Incidentally, reliable pregnancy tests were not developed until the early 20th century. Eliza would have suspected her pregnancy when she missed her first period, but would have waited to miss a second one and observe 1st trimester symptoms (nausea, fatigue, etc) before feeling more sure. Finally, “quickening” (feeling the baby move) was the final proof. That generally happened between 16-20 weeks. For a stage show it makes sense for her to be visibly pregnant so the audience can be shown instead of told, but in real life she would have already known for a while.

Some dramatic conflation occurring here. The Lee-Laurens duel happened in 1778; Hamilton resigned his position on Washington’s staff sometime in the spring of 1781; Philip was born in Jan 1782. So presumably, he was conceived in the period between Hamilton’s leaving service and his command of a battalion for Yorktown in Jul 1781, not before.

But, narrative.

By the emotion displayed, it’s clear Hamilton’s upset Eliza went over his head to the general, but it’s not clear whether this is because her letter might’ve played a part in his being sent home and denied a command, or because she didn’t trust in him enough to believe he’d have come home on his own had he known.

This line is delivered with similar inflection and tone to the same line in Urinetown’s “We’re Not Sorry (Reprise)”.
https://youtu.be/3sufNWY2XCk

Urinetown is a satirical musical set in a future world where people must pay (increasingly rising) fees to urinate. The musical uses this bizarre situation to make fun of politics and “attacks corporate greed, rampant exploitation and unsustainable lifestyles”.
https://twitter.com/lin_manuel/status/501417901136830465?

Characteristically, Hamilton interrupts Eliza to come back with this. But there is a noticable gap after the next line: “But you deserve a chance to meet your son” where he chooses not to retort, showing that even Hamilton won’t argue against the ‘son card’. This foreshadows how Philip’s birth, and death, would change him.

Hamilton wrote Eliza saying he wanted a son:

You shall engage shortly to present me with a boy. You will ask me if a girl will not answer the purpose. By no means. I fear, with all the mother’s charms, she may inherit the caprices of her father and then she will enslave, tantalize, and plague one half [the] sex, out of pure regard to which I protest against a daughter.

So, just to put that paragraph into 21st century terms: “You’re pretty and I can’t keep it in my pants so if we had a daughter she would inherit both those things and we would have a tramp on our hands.”

Context is everything. In the thick of war, Eliza’s key phrase takes on a more personal meaning – look at how lucky we are to still be alive, when everyone around us is dying.

Hamilton wrote to Eliza in 1780:

But now we are talking of times to come, tell me my pretty damsel have you made up your mind upon the subject of housekeeping? Do you soberly relish the pleasure of being a poor mans wife? Have you learned to think a home spun preferable to a brocade and the rumbling of a waggon wheel to the musical rattling of a coach and six? Will you be able to see with perfect composure your old acquaintances flaunting it in gay life, tripping it along in elegance and splendor, while you hold an humble station and have no other enjoyments than the sober comforts of a good wife?

This line shows how much Eliza loves Hamilton. She doesn’t care if they will be wealthy, she just wants to be with him, which is something we see throughout her whole story and the 50 years that she outlives Hamilton.

This is a theme that is repeated in “It’s Quiet Uptown” where Hamilton sings:

Look at where we are, look at where we started. I know I don’t deserve you, Eliza, but hear me out, that would be enough.

As Hamilton himself says earlier, he never thought he’d live past twenty, where he comes from some get half as many.

This is the first instance of Eliza’s “enough” motif. Throughout the show, she asks Alexander to do things for her—“stay alive” and just “stay” here, “share a fraction of [his] time” in “Non-Stop,” “come back to bed” in “Best of Wives and Best of Women.” She has very explicit desires and knows what will make her feel “satisfied,” or fulfilled.

“That would be enough” is also an approximate translation of “dayenu”, both the title and the chorus of a song sung as part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. It’s sung as the answer to various ways G-d helped the Jews escape slavery in Egypt, e.g. “If he had brought us out of Egypt, and had not carried out judgements against them, it would have been enough.” Having Eliza echo this sentiment shows how much faith she places in Hamilton. Unfortunately, Hamilton is not quite so selfless, nor half so omnipotent. He often has to set as aside, and sometimes downright ignores, Eliza’s requests and her. This could also tie into the “satisfied” motif in an even more heartbreaking way:

Maybe she doesn’t know it outright in the same way that Angelica does, or maybe she doesn’t want to, but when Eliza questions “What would be enough?” in “Non-Stop,” she dances around the fact that Alexander will “never be satisfied” just having her as a wife, that she will never be enough for him the way that he is for her.

The child grows up to be Philip, who does greatly resemble his father—see “Blow Us All Away.” Unfortunately, this resemblance includes a prickly sense of honor and impetuous nature. These shared traits lead to the duels and agonized deaths of both Philip and Alexander.

Eliza mentions Alexander’s smile before his mind, conveying that it is his personality not genius that she fell in love with.

Eliza is always content with what she has: life, love, and happiness. On the other hand, Hamilton constantly yearns for more power, fame, and money; he refuses to grow attached to things because they are always taken away from him. Eliza tries to communicate the point to him that being alive and in love is much more than enough.

These lines are later repeated in “It’s Quiet Uptown,” sung then by Alexander to Eliza. Here, they are about Eliza’s inability to understand her husband’s mindset. Later, Alexander reuses this line to acknowledge Eliza’s pain at losing Philip and that he doesn’t know where they can go from that loss.

Does Eliza actually know who she’s marrying? At this point in the show, she’s unaware of Hamilton’s unquenchable thirst to rise up above his class and circumstances.

Compare this with Angelica, who was able to read Hamilton almost instantaneously at their first meeting in “Satisfied.”

We learn later in “Burn” that Angelica has already tactfully cautioned Eliza about Alexander’s motives:

“Be careful with that one, love
He will do what it takes to survive.”

He will in fact go on to betray her not only through the act of adultery, but also in publishing an account of the affair publicly to clear his name in “The Reynolds Pamphlet.”

In the West Wing episode “Ellie,” President Bartlet says to his daughter, Ellie:

The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day.

Sorkin used a nearly identical line in the earlier Sports Night episode “What Kind of Day Has It Been,” where Casey tells his son, Charlie:

The only thing you have to do to make me and your mom happy is come home at the end of the day.

Miranda has acknowledged that Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing was a major influence while writing Hamilton.

https://twitter.com/NellyMoloney/status/636192470947221504 https://twitter.com/lin_manuel/status/639843625040539648

This line is ironic because, as we find out in the finale, it is largely due to Eliza’s work chronicling her husband’s achievements that he has a legacy at all. Moreover, after her husband’s death, Eliza created quite a legacy for herself through her tireless philanthropy. So really, it is all Eliza’s doing that the couple is remembered to history.

Eliza’s dismissal of legacy is contrasted against Hamilton’s desire to be remembered. Unfortunately, Hamilton doesn’t listen to her and in protecting his legacy by releasing the Reynolds Pamphlet, he simultaneously damages it and his relationship with Eliza.

It’s a bit awkward that Eliza tells Hamilton this. With his untimely death, Alexander left Eliza to pay off his many debts. She initially had to sell the Grange, their family home, and was only later able to repurchase it after selling land she inherited from her father upon his death. Hamilton himself refused the pension of land that was promised to him as a military officer. When Eliza first asked the government to grant it to her as his widow, she was denied. It wasn’t until 1837 that Congress compensated her for Hamilton’s pension, to the tune of $30,000.

However, despite the poverty which overshadowed her widowhood, Eliza was a generous and dedicated philanthropist, and was far more concerned with raising money for others than for herself. We clearly see the seeds of this here.

Here Eliza references how he never seems to have a peaceful mind. There is always something going on, some conflict he has to get past, some fight he has to win. Eliza, on the other hand, is pretty chill, and would like Hamilton to finally be at rest inside his mind.

This line is reflected twice in “Burn”: “The world has no right to my heart”, and again, “You forfeit all rights to my heart”. All Eliza wants now is to know what Alexander is feeling, to hold his affections. After he betrays her, she revokes his privilege to have the same from her.

ADDITION (based on suggestion): This line also shows that Eliza is not as oblivious as initially thought. Seeing as marriages in those days typically required the couple to become closer AFTER the actual marriage (see: Hamilton asking Philip Schuyler for Eliza’s hand after two weeks of courtship), Eliza understands her position in Alexander’s life and heart. She is proving that while she is kind, she is not as naive as her image would have us believe.

This theme is a major throughline in Eliza’s character arc in Hamilton. Here, she sees the narrative as Alexander’s to determine; she’s asking him to permit her to be a part of it. In “Burn,” she revokes that request (“I’m erasing myself from the narrative”), and finally, in “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” she acknowledges her ability to control the story herself (“I put myself back in the narrative”).

In Hamilton: The Revolution, Lin notes that this verse was a late addition to the show, added in to thread the “narrative” motif through the early parts of Eliza’s story:

My first draft of this song ended here [with “If i could grant you peace of mind”], but I revisited the tune after writing “Burn” in Act Two. Tommy and I discussed making Eliza even more active here—not just expressing this sentiment, but asking to be let into Hamilton’s internal life. If she’s “erasing herself from the narrative” in Act Two, she needs to be part of it in Act One. I love the way this last section soars—I can’t imagine the song without it now.

Incidentally, the melody of this line echoes that of “It’s hotter at home in La Vibora” from another Miranda tune, In the Heights‘ “Paciencia y Fe” (lit.: “Patience and Faith”). In that song, a woman tells her story to the audience while here, Eliza asks Alexander for a little patience and faith to let her be a part of his story.

This line is both ironic, seeing that this is the story “they,” the Hamiltons, wrote, and breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging that this is a story written by the future “they,” of history and of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The metaphoric chapter is a continuation of the narrative, possibly a reference to the novel-like life they would live together, or even just Eliza’s incredible story.

This line gets called back to in Act II, during “Say No To This” when Maria Reynolds begs Alexander to pay off her husband and convinces him that if he does so, he can keep seeing her.

If you pay / You can stay."

Also echoed during “Take A Break”, but in reverse: There, Alexander does stay home, but the rest of his family leaves, with disastrous consequences.

Poor Eliza.

For the first time, Eliza changes the line from “that” to “I,” indicating that even though she doesn’t need much to be happy, she worries that this simple domestic life won’t be enough to keep Alexander satisfied. Her fear is well-founded, considering his obsession with legacy and the events of Act II.

At this line, in the original Broadway staging, Eliza puts her hand on her stomach, indicating that the “we” here refers to their growing family.

The descending piano line at the end of this song is retooled as the pulse of “It’s Quiet Uptown.” The Hamilton family feelings in this show are so deadly.