King George's Role in "Hamilton"

A few blog posts ago, I wrote about the cut John Adams rap, and why Lin-Manuel Miranda chose to remove it from the show. The conclusion that I came to was that it was cut for the sake of perspicuity; the rap is ultimately redundant and takes up unnecessary stage time, as well as being targeted toward a character that never actually appears in person on stage throughout the entire show.

But upon further thought, I realized that this logic completely falls apart when you examine another aspect of the show- that of King George III. He has three songs to himself, all of which are solo numbers, and he never interacts with another character outside of that- hell, he's never even featured on stage outside of his ballads. With the Adams rap, it was half of one song ("The Adams Administration") that was cut, but in this instance, it's three full songs that are fairly inconsequential in the scheme of things- not only that, but really King George's entire character could be cut from the show and none of the other characters would really be affected. The only character that is stated to have interaction with George is John Adams, who, as you'll recall, isn't actually in the show.

But I think that there's a fundamental difference between George's songs and the Adams rap. No other songs in the show are anything like the Brit-pop pseudo-love ballads that the monarch spouts every so often during relevant events in the chronology of the show. They are both lyrically and musically different from everything else in the show, and cutting it denies the show the variety that these songs very effectively inspire.