Burn

Please refer back to this “Helpless” annotation if you’d like to be reminded of Hamilton’s historical abilities as a smooth operator.

The musical pattern here stands in both comparison and contrast to the opening track “Alexander Hamilton.” It is an almost identical repurposing of the chord progression from that song with a few exceptions of walking bass lines that are different. But listen closely to the vi, iii, IV, I, III pattern. There’s even an added twist of contrast in meter: “Burn” is in 6/8 meter while “Alexander Hamilton” is in 4/4. This sets up a speaking juxtaposition between the two tracks: the first track has a strong beat, an almost militant certainty in and optimism about Alexander’s character, while this track slows and whirls for a more reflective and tragic depiction of doubt and acrimony against him. It’s even more upsetting that this change comes from the voice of Hamilton’s most ardent supporter.

In the last three lines, you can physically see the damage that Hamilton’s infidelity has caused to Eliza and their relationship; she goes from being certain of their love, to accusatory, to regretful and knowing that she had thought wrong.

Of further interest, an early draft of the song to introduce Eliza’s romance with Hamilton was called “This One’s Mine.” Though it was cut and replaced with “Helpless,” Eliza still repeatedly calls Hamilton ‘mine.’

Despite their distance, Angelica continues to act as Eliza’s speaking voice and interpreter. This is a motif throughout the play: see “The Schuyler Sisters,” when Eliza asks Angelica what they’re looking for again, and “Helpless” when Angelica parses Eliza’s feelings and does the necessary actions for her desires to come about, making them manifest for Hamilton and the audience. It is not until Eliza’s later lyric that she is “erasing [herself] from the narrative” that the audience sees that she is not her sister’s helpless sidekick but rather a person with agency in her own right, who has her own ways to pull the strings. Eliza could speak here and give her own interpretation, but she chooses not to.

Throughout the play, Angelica always has a clearer understanding of Hamilton and his motives than Eliza does. In “Satisfied,” she knows that part of his attraction to her and Eliza is their position in society, as well as recognizing that marriage alone will not be enough to make him satisfied with his life.

However, Angelica misses the mark with this analysis; throughout the rest of the show, as Miranda puts it in his 60 Minutes interview, it’s clear that “Hamilton was ready to die from the time he was 14 years old.” Washington spots it right away. Hamilton doesn’t care about his own personal survival. What he cares about is the survival of his reputation and his legacy, which he’s determined will outlive him.

Eliza’s repeated refrain “stay alive / that would be enough” stands as a sort of rebuke or counterweight both to Angelica’s skepticism and Alexander’s own fatalism.

This line refers to the letters Hamilton wrote to woo her. Here, Eliza is is talking about how Hamilton’s writing made her “defenseless,” literally “Helpless.” She says that Hamilton wrote her wondrous structures that both flattered and amazed her, showing that she understood Hamilton’s powerful way with words, and that she loved him for it.

Furthermore, the cathedrals that Eliza says that Hamilton built emphasizes that these letters weren’t just marvelous to Eliza, but sacred. Eliza realizes that she had worshiped Alexander, rather than what marriage is supposed to be- two equals.. Eliza is saying that he built their life together, their marriage, out of these words. This imagery sets up the audience to view Hamilton’s actions with Maria Reynolds as both the personal betrayal and the religious sin that they were.

These sequences of false rhyme, assonance, and consonance (senses/sentences/defenseless and palaces/paragraphs) which are built upon in a later verse as sentences/senseless and paranoid/paragraph embody some of Eliza’s most intricate lyrics. As a character who is portrayed as naive and sweet (and ‘helpless’), it is fitting that when she claims her own agency, her self-expression become more complex.

While Eliza herself would spend the rest of her life poring through her correspondence with Hamilton, her own letters to him were lost to history.

In the song “Say No to This” Hamilton has an affair with Maria Reynolds. She lures him into the scandal by pretending to have an abusive husband. However, this was a plot with her husband to blackmail Hamilton. He pays the money, and his relationship with Reynolds is kept secret until the song “We Know”, when Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison find papers that pretty much explain the whole thing.

“Burn” is a response to “The Reynolds Pamphlet”, when the world discovers Hamilton’s affair, the first American political sex scandal.

Before they married, in the song “Helpless”, Hamilton sends Eliza several love letters in the hopes that she will give into her fear of marrying someone so poor and naive (coming from an extremely wealthy and influential family) to marry Hamilton. As we see in “Helpless”, Hamilton helped Eliza break out of her shell. She trusted him, and now feels abandoned by who she felt was the only person who trusted her.

How could this happen? To try to make sense everything, Eliza scans the love notes Hamilton sent her years ago to try to find any sign that he might abandone her or any reason she should distrust him. She doesn’t find any, which just makes her more upset.

This finishes off Eliza’s methodical reductions in certainty that Hamilton is hers – first she knew it, then he said it, then she thought it, and now she acknowledges it as a thing of the past (if it ever was at all).

In a letter from Alexander Hamilton on March 17, 1780, he writes

Tis from circumstances like these we best discover the true sentiments of the heart. Yours upon every occasion testifies that it is intirely mine.

Hamilton always held Eliza’s heart, and he knew it, but he still broke Eliza’s hold on his.

During the song, Eliza uses the term “burn” to reference the rise and fall of her relationship with Hamilton, changing the meaning of the word throughout the song.

In this first part she claims the world seemed to burn, meaning that she was on fire with her passion for her future husband. She next refers to the tangible burning of the letters and his reputation in the eyes of the public. Lastly she says she hopes he burns, this time meaning his political career. It is also worth noting that Eliza was very religious and by the end of this song she is hoping Hamilton will burn and pay for his sins.

It is worth noting that Lin Manuel Miranda has largely credited Alan Menken’s Little Mermaid as a huge influence on his wanting to write musicals. The way this line is sung is similar to this line from “Part of Your World” sung by Ariel in that film:

What’s a fire and why does it – what’s the word? Burn?

Same rising voice and emphasis. I would not be surprised if Miranda was aware of this and this similarity is on purpose.

Not only did Hamilton print the Reynolds Pamphlet for public consumption to defend himself, but he included as appendices the letters that Maria and James Reynolds wrote to him

In the show, Eliza has been absent since “Schuyler Defeated.” Now that’s she back, her first direct comment on the affair isn’t even on the adultery itself, but on Hamilton’s mortifying publication—a much later blunder that Hamilton definitely could have avoided.

It’s incredibly telling what Eliza seems to latch onto here. This is the only time she even references Maria, and she does so while placing the blame entirely on her husband. In other songs (“We Know,” “Say No To This”), Hamilton places most of the blame on Maria, painting her as an amoral seductress and himself as the victim (in “she courted me, escorted me to bed, and when she had me in her corner, that’s when Reynolds extorted me” he only describes the Reynoldses doing things—he’s the passive/wronged party).

Eliza rejects the easy option of blaming everything on Maria and letting Hamilton off easy. Even Reynolds, who basically planned the thing, called Maria his “whore wife,” but Eliza, the one who could most easily be forgiven for attacking Maria over this, refuses to succumb to slut shaming. Eliza only calls her “this girl,” which actually increases the onus put on Alexander. Maria isn’t a “bitch” or a seductress or a con artist, or even a woman, but a mere girl—naive, unwise, powerless—and Alexander should have known better.

Not only were Alexander’s political prospects ruined and his reputation damaged, but Eliza’s reputation suffered as well. To quote the press at the time:

Art thou a wife? See him, whom thou has chosen for the partner of this life, lolling in the lap of a harlot!!

Angelica really did send a letter to Eliza with a similar line (emphasis in original):

Merit, virtue, and talents must have enemies and [are] always exposed to envy so that, my dear Eliza, you see the penalties attending the position of so amiable a man. All this you would not have suffered if you had married into a family less near the sun.”

The line must’ve struck a chord with Chernow, too, as he named the chapter that includes this letter “Flying Too Near The Sun”.

The expression comes from the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus, in which Icarus is given wings held together with wax. When he flies too high, the wax melts and he falls to his death, illustrating the perils of hubris.

A similar pattern with a twist on the earlier pre-chorus “You and your words flooded my senses / Your sentences left me defenseless / You built me palaces out of paragraphs / You built cathedrals.”

The former reflects upon a moment of love and infatuation, the latter a reflection upon disappointment realized.

The same talent Hamilton displays with the pen which was earlier used to woo her heart is now recognized by Eliza as a tool of manipulation and deceit.

It’s also an indication of Eliza’s growing understanding of her husband. She attacks him in the one place she knows will really hurt him: his writing ability.

Eliza trails off without finishing her sentence. The way this is sung, how Eliza might have completed it is open to the audience’s interpretation. In context, none of the interpretations would be flattering for Hamilton, and on its own, the lyric paints him as self-absorbed.

Eliza has always known Hamilton was a little self-involved—after all, she didn’t tell him about her pregnancy because she knew he was more focused on the revolution. But here, she seems to finally realize that the compromises she’s made living with a selfish but brilliant man didn’t break in her favor. She thought he was hers, but he was first and foremost his own.

Cathy has a similar moment when she really gets sick of Jamie’s self-involvement in The Last Five Years’s “See I’m Smiling.” Jamie was also obsessed with his writing and cheated on his wife, just like Hamilton.

The point is, Jamie
That you can’t spend a single day
That’s not about
You and you and nothing but you

In “That Would Be Enough,” a younger, more optimistic Eliza sings:

Let me be a part of the narrative
in the story they will write someday.
Let this moment be the first chapter:
where you decide to stay
and I could be enough

Here, instead of asking someone else to “let” her be a part of the narrative, she takes control the only way she can, by refusing to participate in what is still Alexander’s story. Instead of being passively self-effacing, as she was in “Helpless,” here she claims her agency through active self-erasure.

Prior to her line, “I’m erasing myself from the narrative” Eliza repeats “You” over and over again, expressing how Alexander would only ever consider himself in the big moments in their lives together. Here, she begins with “I’m”. In this small, yet significant shift, she is letting Alexander know that it is no longer about him. She is the one in control in this moment, and she is choosing where the story will play from here in regards to her place in it. This song is a show stopper. Not only is it stopping the show to allow Eliza her moment, but it is also stopping Alexander in his path of self destruction for legacy.

The wording about future historians refers to the fact that very little of Eliza’s personal correspondance survived to the present day, although we still have some of her letters from Alexander. It also ties into the ‘future history’ thread underpinning the entire show. Eliza is not only acknowledging the fact that she is connected to a life that will be retold in the history books– she is also suggesting that while you might have very little control over how your story might be interpreted and twisted and spun over the years, your choices are still significant to how that story is written. This is alluded to several other times throughout the play, but this is the first time that a character consciously makes that kind of choice. In fact, Eliza is the only one who ever does, deciding to remain relatively unknown. As she later sings:

The world has no right to my heart
The world has no place in our bed
They don’t get to know what I said

She claims her right to privacy in the face of the world and history’s prying eyes, deciding that she will not give the world, history, anything to talk about, anything to see. She destroys the letters that might have given historians ammunition against her, or evidence from which to draw conclusions—conclusions that she would have no control over.

When she does finally put herself back in the narrative, she does not once express concern that history will have its eyes on her. Instead of simply watching her step and wondering how her actions will be perceived in the future, she asserts herself, inserting herself into the history-making process. The closest any other characters get to this level of agency are when Washington steps down from presidency in order to control how presidency would function in the future, and when Hamilton publishes the Reynolds Pamphlet, but even the latter is not quite up to level; Hamilton is trying to control how his contemporaries perceive his integrity as treasurer, with no real thought of the impact it will have on the future of his story. Eliza, however, compiles papers, interviews soldiers, raises money for the monument that would help immortalize Washington—all things that work to establish a living narrative, that look into the future. “She tells [their] story,” and even when she herself wonders if they will tell her story, it is active: “have I done enough?” It is not a question of whether anyone would care enough to remember her or how she would be portrayed, so much as it is a question of whether or not she has told the story well enough for it to be remembered.

Eliza’s self-erasure here is an interesting way of approaching the lack of female voices in primary sources at the time. Compare also Goldsberry (who plays Angelica)’s lyric from the BET Awards' Hamilton Cypher: “I came to represent the ladies in our hist’ry /
We know the founding fathers but the mothers are a mystery.” All of this suggests that, of all of the characters, gentle Eliza has the most agency in this story. She is never caught in the jaws of fate and history. It is a woman who is finally agile enough to weave in and out of the narrative, seeing it from both sides. She lives and tells the story.

It’s also worth noting that in the second line Eliza starts referring to herself in the third person, saying her name and “she/her” rather than “I.” She has temporarily stepped out of her own character, going along with the idea of “erasing [her]self from the narrative.”

As she mentioned earlier, the scandal has “ruined [their] lives” and “torn apart” their relationship.

A broken heart gives a small possibility of healing and indicates that the relationship may be salvageable. But a heart torn into pieces is irreparable and will never be the same.

This line also seems to allude to King George III’s statement in “I Know Him” that “they will tear each other into pieces.” At the time, this is taken to refer to the recently liberated Americans. However, in this context, it can refer to the destruction of Hamilton’s relationship with Eliza.

In the stage show, Eliza is alone on stage during this song and does in fact set some paper on fire with a candle, letting it burn for a moment in her hand before dropping it into a bucket of sand. Fierce, girl.

In “That Would Be Enough,” a younger, more optimistic Eliza sings:

Let me be a part of the narrative
in the story they will write someday.
Let this moment be the first chapter:
where you decide to stay
and I could be enough

Here, instead of asking someone else to “let” her be a part of the narrative, she takes control the only way she can, by refusing to participate in what is still Alexander’s story. Instead of being passively self-effacing, as she was in “Helpless,” here she claims her agency through active self-erasure.

Prior to her line, “I’m erasing myself from the narrative” Eliza repeats “You” over and over again, expressing how Alexander would only ever consider himself in the big moments in their lives together. Here, she begins with “I’m”. In this small, yet significant shift, she is letting Alexander know that it is no longer about him. She is the one in control in this moment, and she is choosing where the story will play from here in regards to her place in it. This song is a show stopper. Not only is it stopping the show to allow Eliza her moment, but it is also stopping Alexander in his path of self destruction for legacy.

The wording about future historians refers to the fact that very little of Eliza’s personal correspondance survived to the present day, although we still have some of her letters from Alexander. It also ties into the ‘future history’ thread underpinning the entire show. Eliza is not only acknowledging the fact that she is connected to a life that will be retold in the history books– she is also suggesting that while you might have very little control over how your story might be interpreted and twisted and spun over the years, your choices are still significant to how that story is written. This is alluded to several other times throughout the play, but this is the first time that a character consciously makes that kind of choice. In fact, Eliza is the only one who ever does, deciding to remain relatively unknown. As she later sings:

The world has no right to my heart
The world has no place in our bed
They don’t get to know what I said

She claims her right to privacy in the face of the world and history’s prying eyes, deciding that she will not give the world, history, anything to talk about, anything to see. She destroys the letters that might have given historians ammunition against her, or evidence from which to draw conclusions—conclusions that she would have no control over.

When she does finally put herself back in the narrative, she does not once express concern that history will have its eyes on her. Instead of simply watching her step and wondering how her actions will be perceived in the future, she asserts herself, inserting herself into the history-making process. The closest any other characters get to this level of agency are when Washington steps down from presidency in order to control how presidency would function in the future, and when Hamilton publishes the Reynolds Pamphlet, but even the latter is not quite up to level; Hamilton is trying to control how his contemporaries perceive his integrity as treasurer, with no real thought of the impact it will have on the future of his story. Eliza, however, compiles papers, interviews soldiers, raises money for the monument that would help immortalize Washington—all things that work to establish a living narrative, that look into the future. “She tells [their] story,” and even when she herself wonders if they will tell her story, it is active: “have I done enough?” It is not a question of whether anyone would care enough to remember her or how she would be portrayed, so much as it is a question of whether or not she has told the story well enough for it to be remembered.

Eliza’s self-erasure here is an interesting way of approaching the lack of female voices in primary sources at the time. Compare also Goldsberry (who plays Angelica)’s lyric from the BET Awards' Hamilton Cypher: “I came to represent the ladies in our hist’ry /
We know the founding fathers but the mothers are a mystery.” All of this suggests that, of all of the characters, gentle Eliza has the most agency in this story. She is never caught in the jaws of fate and history. It is a woman who is finally agile enough to weave in and out of the narrative, seeing it from both sides. She lives and tells the story.

It’s also worth noting that in the second line Eliza starts referring to herself in the third person, saying her name and “she/her” rather than “I.” She has temporarily stepped out of her own character, going along with the idea of “erasing [her]self from the narrative.”

The implication in the play is that she’s burning her letters to Hamilton, leaving no records of her love with him and leaving no counterbalance to the sordid letters with Maria. This is an act of self-definition.

In reality, Eliza’s letters have gone missing from history, whether by her choice or not. We still have over 100 of the letters Alexander wrote Eliza, including many sweet ones from their courtship.

The words “you forfeit” here are sung in an echo of Eliza’s own name motif that first appears in “The Schuyler Sisters.”

Eliza first declares that the world has no rights to her heart or place in her bed, then that Alexander has forfeited his own rights to her heart and bed. By cheating on her, Alexander has reduced himself from a loving husband to just another anonymous member of the world, with no more right to know her mind than anyone else.
In a letter from Alexander Hamilton on March 17, 1780, he writes

Tis from circumstances like these we best discover the true sentiments of the heart. Yours upon every occasion testifies that it is intirely mine.

Hamilton truly held Eliza’s heart.

Alexander sleeping in his office emphasizes his obsession with his work. Isolated from his family due to his mistakes, all he has left is his work. His punishment reflects how he prioritized work over family in “Take A Break”, leading to the affair and his downfall.

Luckily for him, in “Best of Wives and Best of Women,” Eliza contradicts this line, telling him to “come back to bed”, conveying how she has truly forgiven Alexander.

Earlier in the song, Eliza mourns the loss of the time “when you were mine.” Here, as she punishes Alexander in the only way she can, she knows that he will also mourn that loss as he sleeps alone.

Eliza could be wishing for Alexander to endure pain equal to her feelings of heartbreak and betrayal. If Alexander was to literally burn in flames, as his letters are burning, the experience would be very painful. In “My Shot,” Hamilton described himself as “a shiny piece of coal”. Hamilton has always been ready to burn himself to cinders in pursuit of his goals. Since “That Would Be Enough,” Eliza has tried to temper his ambitions to more sustainable pastures, but here she bitterly wishes him success in his endeavors. This calls back to Angelica’s comparison of Hamilton to Icarus. Icarus' wings burned when he flew too close to the sun causing his very literal downfall.

Moreover, “burn”’s use following the preceding lines about “forfeiting his place in their bed” suggests a very specific meaning of “burn.” As a devout Christian, Eliza would be familiar with the biblical meaning of burn which likens it to being consumed by sexual desire. Note that Hamilton has caused all this damage by having an affair with Maria Reynolds while his wife was away upstate. By shutting her husband out of her life, she is also withholding any sexual gratification.

This biblical interpretation of burn was employed in 1776’s “But Mr. Adams”. In the song, Jefferson claims that he cannot write the Declaration of Independence as he is planning to go home to his wife.

Adams: “Now then, sir- will you be a patriot or a lover?”
Jefferson: [beat] “A lover.”
Adams: “NO.”
Jefferson: “But I burn, Mister A!”

Adultery is also considered to be a cardinal sin in Christianity. By sinning, you were condemning yourself to hell. Therefore, it can be inferred that she wishes Hamilton to burn in hell for his betrayal and the sin of adultery.

In conclusion, this parting line from Eliza is in itself a SICK BURN.