patriotic enterprise

[calimac]

B. signed up for a month on Disney+ so that we could watch H.Milton, as the display ads stylize the title. I didn't much like it.

It's not on historical accuracy, for which I'd give it a reasonable ranking. It's the waywardness, incoherence, and inconsistency of the storytelling, particularly in the first act. I watched it in half-hour chunks, which is why it took until the next day to finish; I think if I'd been forced to hear an entire act at once, it would have given me a headache. That's one reason I'm glad I never saw it in the theater. Also, about two minutes in I rewound it to the beginning and turned the close-captioning on. I think that in the theater I'd have had even more trouble making out what anybody said. The music, when it was music, was not nearly good enough to compensate for these problems.

Exception to both considerations is the Election of 1800 scene. It accurately conveys the bottom line - forced to choose between Jefferson and Burr, Hamilton went for Jefferson because he trusted his integrity more - but the show completely mauls the circumstances that led to that point. On the other hand, I can't imagine how they'd have told a more accurate story on stage in less than four minutes. And it was a terrifically dry and incisive piece of writing and stagecraft, vastly the most enjoyable thing in the show.

Then there's King George's song in act 1, less amusing in context than out of it. This does not convey what the real King George was like at all. It is, however, an accurate picture of what the revolutionary colonists thought he was like. His later reappearances have nothing to do with King George either way, and may be thought of as a mocking chorus to give a different perspective on events.

But of all the tiresomely ornate, overdramatized, overrepeated, and overemotional things in the earlier part of the show, the most puzzling was the repeated line from act 1, "I am not throwing away my shot." What exactly does this mean? Obviously it's some sort of expression of determination, but what? Does it mean generally "I am not giving up," or "I am not wasting my effort on a goal I can't achieve," or "This time it's a goal I can achieve," or literally "I am not firing my gun in the air in a duel" or all of these at different times?

Anyway, now I've been here and done this.

Comments

[wild_patience]

"Not throwing away my shot" is the goal thing. In the show, he wanted a field command and to accept what he saw as a desk job would take him out of consideration for that. He would be seen just as a desk jockey. More largely, it's not throwing away your life for something you don't really believe in. He cautions Laurens later not to throw away his shot.

[pink_halen]

I suspected that I would not like the performance. You have confirmed that to me. Yes, I know it was a big Broadway hit but I don't care. I have no desire to see it.

[nodrog]

It does refer to a duel, but why it was used here I have no idea.

[andrewducker]

I've not yet seen Hamilton (Sophia isn't back in nursery until August, so we don't get the time), so feel free to ignore this - but I would _generally_ interpret that as
"I have only one shot (opportunity) to achieve my goal, and I am not going to throw it away (give it up/use it unwisely)."

I tend to think of it as a sports metaphor (where you have a shot at the goal). It's certainly used in that sense in the film 8 Mile:
"You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo"

[calimac]

The problem is that none of these meanings would make sense in all the contexts the phrase is used in during the show. So either it's something else that neither of us has thought of, or it's multiple meanings.

[andrewducker]

I'll look forward to watching the show and seeing whether I like it more than you did (and have any clue what they mean by the phrase).