Following up on my last post about the opening number, "Alexander Hamilton," and my general introduction on Classical Echoes, this time I'm going to be digging into "My Shot," a 5-minute, 33-second beast of a song that defines Hamilton's character, his aims, and his methods.
Again, the song's long and complex, and some of the lyrics eluded me even after quite a few listens, so feel free to review the lyrics here, as well as have a listen if you didn't instantly hear the syncopated, earworm of a refrain when you read the title.
The classical connections here are somewhat more tangential than in previous posts, but I still think (hope?) they're worthwhile.
"Shots" and Philology
As I write this post, I'm also conducting one-on-one meetings with my Summer Intensive Greek students, who are powering through first-year Ancient Greek in 10 weeks online. I was speaking not too long ago with one on the importance of learning multiple definitions for the vocabulary, because words are complicated and rarely map one-to-one with English. As native speakers, we are well aware of the fact that words have different meanings, but as readers in second languages, and especially the ancient languages whose native speakers we lack access to, even the most philologically minded of us can be tripped up when an author uses the same word with multiple senses in a passage. Such is the case with the "shot" of "my shot"
The resounding chant launched first by Hamilton himself, then echoed by his new-found friends (John Laurens, Hercules Mulligan, and the Marquis de Lafayette) and ultimately by the ensemble is:
I am not throwing away my shot!
I am not throwing away my shot!
Hey yo, I’m just like my country
I’m young, scrappy and hungry
And I’m not throwing away my shot!
Shot as Opportunity
At its most basic understanding here, "shot" means something like "opportunity." In the previous song, "Aaron Burr, Sir" the other three declared revolutionaries invite Burr to "give [them] a verse, drop some knowledge." Burr demurs (sir) to participate, preferring to stick with his trademark "talk less, smile more" strategy of not taking sides. Alexander can't help but jump in with "If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?," a paraphrase of a quote popularly but incorrectly attributed to him. His interruption makes space for him to introduce himself just as Laurens, Mulligan and Lafayette had done previously and answers the question they ask: "Who is this kid? What's he gonna do?"
Hamilton is speaking, of course, about his shot to introduce himself, and to become part of something bigger than himself, namely the American Revolution, but it's also laying out his general approach to life: he won't give up the opportunities life affords him. As the "genius.com" commentators on the official lyrics site have noted, the idea takes inspiration from Eminem's "Lose Yourself":
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?
In what follows, we will see Hamilton relentlessly, and even recklessly pursuing opportunities for advancement and glory. Whether it be his drive for a military commission or his decision to work on securing the National Bank over the summer rather than spending time with his family. This is Hamilton's defining characteristic, a sense that opportunities are rare and precious and not to be squandered. I will return to this idea below but first I want to discuss the other senses of "shot" we encounter.
A second sense is made clear by Laurens' call that they "have another---shot!" These are 4 young men out on the town and they are drinking. This specific use of "shot" may or may not be an anachronism; the OED's first use of the word to mean "a dram of spirits" comes in 1928, but the word is used in a vaguer sense to mean "an amount of drink" in the 17th century. Whether it is anachronistic or not, doing shots means drinking purposefully and probably with the quick action implied by the related verb (to shoot). The impulsivity and recklessness with which they drink is very much the same as that with which they fight and is evidence of their carpe diem attitude (see below).
The final sense plays on "shot"s connection with the verb "shoot," both as the action of shooting, the ability to be a "good shot", and on the use of the word to denote the bullet, that which is shot. Lafayette uses the term in precisely this sense when he claims to "make the other side panicky with [his]--shot!", presumably a boast about his marksmanship. Burr later uses the participle with the identical form to the noun as he warns his companions "If you talk [openly about revolution in public], you’re gonna get-- shot!" All of this category of uses of "shot" foreshadow Hamilton's final (and fatal) decision in his duel with Burr, whether to aim to kill Burr or to "throw away his shot" and intentionally miss him.
Miranda has the actors deftly bounce back and forth between the different meanings (and parts of speech) of the word in ways that are impressive and surprising. If we imagine the challenges of a non-native speaker of English hearing (or even reading) these lyrics, we as Classicists can gain an appreciation for the philological comfort we must have to fully appreciate the nuances of the authors with which we spend our time.
To add insult to injury, "My Shot" flies by at a rate of 3.3 words per second (~1100 words over 333 seconds), about the same speed as Pirates of Penzance's "Modern Major-General" at top speed, and about half the speed that Daveed Diggs raps at in "Guns and Ships" later in the show. Although we may need more time to tease out all the meaning, I would venture to say that audiences have no trouble both understanding the shifting meanings of "shot" and the artistry that Miranda has deployed in having characters shift between them.
To add insult to injury, "My Shot" flies by at a rate of 3.3 words per second (~1100 words over 333 seconds), about the same speed as Pirates of Penzance's "Modern Major-General" at top speed, and about half the speed that Daveed Diggs raps at in "Guns and Ships" later in the show. Although we may need more time to tease out all the meaning, I would venture to say that audiences have no trouble both understanding the shifting meanings of "shot" and the artistry that Miranda has deployed in having characters shift between them.
Legacy and Death
The eye for opportunity he displays in "My Shot" is closely connected with Hamilton's sense of imminent death and the need to create a lasting legacy. In the latter half of the song, Hamilton confesses:
I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory
When’s it gonna get me?
In my sleep? Seven feet ahead of me?
If I see it comin’, do I run or do I let it be?
Is it like a beat without a melody?
See, I never thought I’d live past twenty
Where I come from some get half as many
In Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article "All About the Hamiltons," she points out that this Lin-Manuel Miranda also had a sense of his own imminent death before the show would open and that the parallel gave him insight into Hamilton's character. [Sidenote: I love Miranda's imaginary (and impossible) headline:"Unknown Composer Hit by Bus"] After all, if death is a constant threat, one lives differently. Alexander's brush with his own death, and witnessing of the death of his mother and cousin shape him into a young man all too aware of life's short span.
Confronted with this bleak reality, Alexander's position is similar to that of Achilles, who--thanks to his divine parentage--was presented with foreknowledge of what the rest of us are left to guess at:
Confronted with this bleak reality, Alexander's position is similar to that of Achilles, who--thanks to his divine parentage--was presented with foreknowledge of what the rest of us are left to guess at:
My mother Thetis, a moving silver grace
Tells me two fates sweep me on to my death.
If I stay here and fight, I'll never return home,
But my glory will be undying forever.
If I return home to my dear fatherland
My glory is lost but my life will be long,
And death that ends all will not catch me soon.
(Stanley Lombardo, Iliad 9.420-429)
Achilles (ultimately) chooses the short life with immortal glory, because the promise of an immortal good is greater than that of even a long and good (but ultimately finite) mortal life. Hamilton's choice is less clear; no one has predicted the moment of his death or given him a choice between two clear paths. If Achilles opted to return home, he would be guaranteed a long (and relatively happy) life. Even if he fails to achieve anything, Hamilton could die tomorrow, increasing his desire for a high-impact moment of glory (martyrdom in the revolution?)
(enter me)
Achilles' immortal glory comes, at a minimum, in the form of the Iliad itself . The poem takes Achilles' anger as its theme and by paying attention to the terrible impact of that anger on his Greek allies, his Trojan enemies, and even the gods themselves, it celebrates the greatness of the hero. Achilles dies as the Trojan war winds down but lives forever as the subject of a celebrated work of art and as part of the Greek collective memory. Hamilton conspicuously lays out his attempts to achieve a similar sort of immortality after describing the conditions that led to the Revolutionary War:
[HAMILTON:]
Essentially, they tax us relentlessly
Then King George turns around, runs a spending spree
He ain’t ever gonna set his descendants free
So there will be a revolution in this century
Enter me!
[LAFAYETTE/MULLIGAN/LAURENS:]
(He says in parentheses)
[HAMILTON:]
Don’t be shocked when your hist’ry book mentions me
I will lay down my life if it sets us free
Eventually, you’ll see my ascendancy
The metatheatrical line "Enter me!" reads like a character narrating his own entrance to the stage (in this case, the stage of the metaphorical drama of the American Revolution). The character of Hamilton is literally writing himself into history, which is not conceived of as a textbook in the traditional classroom sense, or an epic poem, but rather as a piece of (musical) theater, one of the iconic American storytelling forms. The reading is confirmed by his new friends whose comment about parentheses aligns the line with how stage directions are sometimes written, while also reacting to Hamilton's lack of modesty. The metatheatricality here is heightened by (much of) the audience's awareness that the role of Hamilton was originated by the show's lyricist himself. Miranda writes himself as Hamilton writing himself into history.
Hamilton's following line returns to the sense of legacy now in the drier context of a history book, the context in which the audience of Hamilton is most likely to have encountered the founding father before attending the musical. Miranda's status as both the writer of Hamilton and the actor playing Hamilton allows the character of Hamilton to speak with the authority of the audience's present, giving him the god-like power to predict his own fate, as Thetis had predicted Achilles'. The final line is both a bold forecast of Hamilton's eventual place in the pantheon of Founding Fathers and a meta-theatrical promise of what the unfolding play will show.
The other option: Carpe Diem
Hamilton's sense of imminent death permits another set of responses, one with a good ancient pedigree as well, the possibility of living very much in the present and taking nothing for granted. This epicurean concept is summed up pithily by the phrase carpe diem ("seize the day" or perhaps better "pluck the day", "harvest the day"), which appears in the lovely Ode 1.11 by the Roman poet Horace:
Leuconoë , don’t ask, we never know, what fate the gods grant us,
whether your fate or mine, don’t waste your time on Babylonian,
futile, calculations. How much better to suffer what happens,
whether Jupiter gives us more winters or this is the last one,
one debilitating the Tyrrhenian Sea on opposing cliffs.
Be wise, and mix the wine, since time is short: limit that far-reaching hope.
The envious moment is flying now, now, while we’re speaking:
Seize the day, place in the hours that come as little faith as you can.
(Translation by A.S. Kline and available at Poetry in Translation)
Or perhaps you know it better from Dead Poets' Society?
Hamilton, for a moment considers this response in a way that harmonizes well with the sentiment of his revolutionary companions and the hedonistic call for another "Shot!":
Ask anybody why we livin’ fast and we laugh, reach for a flask
We have to make this moment last, that’s plenty
The lines are a clear echo of the carpe diem sentiment that's broadly echoed in popular culture, including the momentarily ubiquitous phrase YOLO, and songs by the likes of Ke$ha and Pitbull (et al.), but Hamilton, characteristically, cannot be satisfied with this epicurean attitude, and instead aims to be part of something bigger:
Scratch that
This is not a moment, it’s the movement
Where all the hungriest brothers with
Something to prove went?
Without getting into the weeds of ancient philosophical schools about which there are better experts than I, we can say that Hamilton rejects the stance of the Epicureans, who rejected the idea of immortality and placed the emphasis on life.Whereas an Epicurean would consider death an inconsequential and not-to-be-feared transition into non-being, for Hamilton the possibility that his life could be inconsequential is a clear terror. Even if he dies as one of many American martyrs in the course of the Revolution, he aims to achieve at least that immortality through memorialization, even as he questions whether this revolution will be enough to win true freedom.
Two Allusions
I feel compelled to discuss one other feature of the song that stands out to me, and that connects with how we read and think about ancient texts, and yet my thoughts are not fully formed. I'm especially interested in the way Miranda alludes to other artists in both hip-hop/rap and musical theatre idioms.
The two stand-out allusions in the song are as follows:
- Alexander's spelling out of his name: "A-L-E-X-A-N-D / E-R—we are—meant to be…," in the same rhythm and a similar cadence to Notorious B.I.G. in "Going Back to Cali" [Hat tip to the folks who have written about this previously for pointing this out, both the commentators on the lyrics site, and Rebecca Mead. Notorious B.I.G. is not frequently on my playlist.]
- Burr's claim that "I’m with you, but the situation is fraught; You’ve got to be carefully taught", echoing Lt. Cable's song "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" from South Pacific.
Miranda's inclusions of both these allusions in a single song is a testament to his fluency in the two genres that Hamilton succeeds so fabulously at combining. For those who are devotees of either or both genres, the allusions help Miranda establish his authority as well. He acknowledges that he is familiar with the past of these genres and thereby authorizes himself to be their successor, even as he blends the two genres which have largely different aesthetics and audiences.
The specifics of the references also contribute to the characterization of those who quote them. In the lyrics to Going Back to Cali, Biggie establishes himself as a success story, who is triumphant sexually, financially, and in obtaining the food, drink, and marijuana he wants. As Hamilton spells out his name, he attempts to assimilate himself with that level of success (even if he has not achieved it quite yet).
In You've Got to Be Carefully Taught, the American Marine lieutenant Joe Cable muses on his own parents' racism and the way society at large indoctrinates young people into racist thinking. He ultimately is unable to resolve the tension and signs up for an ultimately fatal mission, without resolving the tension created by his illicit love for the Polynesian girl Liat. Whereas for Cable "you've got to be carefully taught" presents the idea that young men, if left "untaught" would avoid the racist attitudes of their parents, Burr's quotation of it suggests that the young men to whom he speaks need to be better taught to avoid incendiary topics like revolution. In his eyes, their education has left them insufficiently prepared to survive in a hostile world.
A striking aspect of these allusions, and here I refer mainly to my experience of the latter, is how clearly they jump out for the knowledgeable reader. South Pacific was 30 years old before I was born, and I don't own the soundtrack. I've seen a production in a theater once and watched the film no more than twice, and yet it's such an iconic song from such an iconic show that it stuck out to me like a neon sign. And I have no doubt that other Broadway fans' experience was similar. So when Aristophanes quotes an Aeschylus play that had been first performed more than half a century earlier, is it probable that the audience would get the allusion. They just might!
When Classicists point out that an author (whether tragedian, orator, or novelist) is alluding to an earlier author (most commonly Homer), I sometimes blanch. Even if the quote triggered a reader's memory, and the allusion was consciously recognized by the original audience, what would they do with it? For me, the allusions in "My Shot" are helpful in thinking about probable answers.
- Would the audience catch the allusions? Probably some would! I, after all, easily caught the South Pacific allusion. And those who know the Notorious B.I.G. catch those allusions in the theater too.
- What happens if you don't catch them? If done well, one reads nearly seamlessly past them. "You've got to be carefully taught" doesn't, I think, seem terribly strange for those who don't know it. And I wasn't aware of the Biggie allusion and never suspected anything through a dozen listens.
- What might some effects be?
- establishment of creative authority and connection with generic convention.
- a little "Hey! I got that!" endorphin rush.
- Fertile ground for character (or scene) development for those in the know.
Even though I've long understood these things intellectually--Indeed, I've passed them on to my students--There is something different in being in an audience reacting as these are deployed. Again, I'm not sure I have firm answers here, and with more time, I'd like to review Hinds' Allusion and Intertext, and think through this more carefully. But for now, I've spent about as much time on this as I can give it this week. There's so much more I might dig into here, but there's another 90% of the soundtrack to think through, and I gave this my best shot.
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