WASHINGTON — Extraordinary interest in the play “Hamilton” has inspired the Library of Congress to put papers on display that are linked to the hit musical.
“Letters to Lyrics: Alexander Hamilton at the Library of Congress” will be on view between May 19 and Aug. 21.
The exhibit documents explore topics including love, war, statesmanship and politics; and show letters that inspired or in some cases were directly quoted to create lyrics for songs such as “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down),” “Helpless,” “Non-Stop” and “Best of Wives and Best of Women.”
“I think the meeting of the history and the present will really surprise you,” Library of Congress educational resources specialist Kaleena Black said.
She’s a big fan of the play and believes other enthusiasts will be impressed.
“These were real people. These were real events and some of the lyrics that you’ve been singing in your head and become obsessed with some of them are written in these documents that have been in existence for hundreds of years and have been at the Library of Congress for over a hundred years,” Black said.
So, does a specialist in early American history believe that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play is a fair historical depiction?
“I’m not going to debunk it. I think it has a kind of emotional truth,” Library Of Congress Manuscript Division historian Julie Miller said.
Miller thinks the play is a bit romanticized but accurately portrays Hamilton’s feelings of being an outsider.
“There’s a lot of very anguished letters in the Hamilton papers where he says thing like, ‘I’m just never going to be at home here, I’m ready to give up, forget it.’ So, I think there’s an emotional understanding of what Hamilton was really like that the play makes quite clear,” Miller noted.
The three month window to see the exhibit might seem to some to be as long as the wait was online or in-person to purchase tickets. The play’s national tour has a 14-week run at the Kennedy Center June 12 through Sept. 16.
All of Hamilton’s original, handwritten letters and documents are digitized and now available for viewing online.
To see the papers’ typed text, that’s easier to read than centuries-old handwriting, you can visit Founders Online, hosted by the National Archives.
“The best way to use the Library of Congress Alexander Hamilton papers is to use it together with Founders Online,” Miller said. “Because you’ll see the text typed out and with notes to explain the things that aren’t obvious.”