It took exactly the right mix of circumstances for "Hamilton" to become the smash hit it did. Join Great Courses favorite, Professor John McWhorter, to look at a history of Broadway musicals and examine why "Hamilton" has received so much hype—and if it lives up to it.
How Hamilton Revolutionized the Broadway Musical
It took exactly the right mix of circumstances for Hamilton to become the smash hit it did. Join Great Courses favorite, Professor John McWhorter, to look at a history of Broadway musicals and examine why Hamilton has received so much hype—and if it lives up to it.
01: Broadway Musicals: Why Hamilton has Captivated the Public's Eye
Hamilton revolutionized the Broadway musical like no other show in the history of musicals. The way it was cast, the music choices, the focus on a character who is historically considered a sidekick among the more famous Founding Fathers …these elements were groundbreaking for the genre. Dive into the radical approach Hamilton creators took in developing this modern musical and understand why the timing and circumstances were ideal, making Hamilton a game-changing experiment that paid off in a way that will go down in history.
12 min
Overview Course No. 7436
About
John McWhorter is an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He earned a PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University. He is the author of several books, including The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language; Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter; and Word on the Street, a book on dialects and Black English. He has also been published in outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and he has appeared on Dateline and Good Morning America, among other platforms.
