But it certainly was no more unlikely than hip-hop Hamilton. \u201cThrough a mutual friend, I learned that he\u2019d read the book,\u201d Chernow said of Miranda. \u201cHe was still starring in \u2018In the Heights\u2019 at the time, and I attended a matinee. I went back stage afterwards and met Lin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me as he was reading the book, hip-hop lyrics started rising off the page. I was completely astonished by his response.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miranda assured him that he was serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe made a complete believer out of me,\u201d Chernow said. \u201cThe story of Alexander Hamilton lends itself to hip-hop treatment. Hamilton\u2019s personality is driven and unrelenting, and the music has that same quality. The music and the man mirror each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miranda purchased theatrical rights to the book and signed on Chernow as historical consultant.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted me to tell him when something was wrong,\u201d Chernow said. \u201cHe said, \u2018I want historians to take this seriously.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There were very few instances where Chernow intervened; most were related to dramatic license to condense Hamilton\u2019s life story into a manageable two-and-a-half hours. So, for example, characters Hamilton met over many years in real life meet during\u00a0the same scene in the play.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people might have started off with the unspoken assumption that history is boring \u2014 Lin-Manuel Miranda felt exactly the opposite,\u201d Chernow said. \u201cHe felt the most dramatic way to tell the story was to stick to the facts. He felt the story was so sensational you couldn\u2019t improve on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Chernow admits he was a little taken aback the first time he attended a rehearsal \u2014 the cast was made up almost exclusively of people of color. But he soon decided the casting was \u201ca stroke of genius,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actors had a special feel for the material, in addition to being very talented. From the moment the cast walks out, it immediately shakes your preconceptions about the Founding Fathers,” Chernow said.<\/p>\n
\u201cConversely, that sense of excitement is felt by the actors, who never thought they\u2019d have a chance to play George Washington or James Madison. This show is not only theatrical, [it\u2019s] a cultural and political phenomenon, showing us who we are as a country now and at the same time showing us what it was then. Black and Latino performers suit a story about young outsiders who created this country, including an estimate that 5 percent of Washington\u2019s army was made up of free blacks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The casting is appropriate, too, in the sense that there is a sizable revisionist movement when it comes to the Founding Fathers. Hamilton, who was an abolitionist, is on the rise, while Jefferson is on the decline, in part because he was an unrepentant slave owner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started the book in 1998. I felt Hamilton was largely overlooked and, among the Founding Fathers, the one most demonized,\u201d Chernow said.\u00a0\u201cJefferson was considered the pure and virtuous tribune of the common people and Hamilton was the stooge of the plutocrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cJefferson\u2019s vision for the country was of small towns and traditional agriculture,” he added. “Hamilton thought in terms of a stock exchange and factories and large cities, which is pretty much the way it turned out. Hamilton would feel much more at home today than Jefferson.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lifelong theatergoer, Chernow previously had a preference for dramas.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that\u2019s come out of this experience that\u2019s very pleasant is a greater understanding and respect for musicals as an art form,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His taste in music, which previously ran from classical to jazz to the American songbook, may have changed as well. He\u2019s become a fan of rap \u2014 or, at least, an admirer of Miranda\u2019s \u201crhymed couplets that very much reminded me of Cole Porter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chernow points out that in addition to a hip-hop persona, Hamilton had several Jewish connections: His mother\u2019s husband, Johann Michael Lavien \u2014 when Hamilton himself\u00a0wrote the name, he spelled it the more traditional “Levine” \u2014 was likely Jewish.<\/p>\n
She left him in St. Croix, met James Hamilton in St. Kitts, and the two moved to Nevis, where Alexander was born out of wedlock.<\/p>\n
As a result, he could not be educated in church schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cLargely self-taught, he had little formal schooling but received individual tutoring\u201d at a school run by a Jewish headmistress, Chernow said. He used to brag that he could recite the Ten Commandments in Hebrew.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps because of this exposure,\u201d Chernow suggests, Hamilton had a particular \u201creverence for Jews,\u201d he said, speaking from his home office in Brooklyn, a copy of his biography at hand. He leafs through his book to find several examples, including one from a trial, where Hamilton said, \u201cWhy distrust the evidence of the Jews? Discredit them and you destroy the Christian religion.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the record, Chernow \u2014 who grew up in an \u201coverwhelmingly Jewish middle-class area\u201d of Forest Hills, Queens \u2014 cannot recite the Decalogue in Hebrew.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have in recent years not been observant, but have a strong sense of Jewish cultural identity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chernow is currently working on a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, but things have changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since Hamilton, there\u2019s been more interest expressed in all my other books, if only because my visibility is greater than before the show,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of the interest is pretty dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter what the future holds, \u201cHamilton\u201d is something special.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn all likelihood,” Chernow said, “this is my last hip-hop musical.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Share](\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\")