"The World Turned Upside Down" and Revisionist History

In "Yorktown," there's a lyric towards the end of the song as the Americans win the Battle of Yorktown- and in effect, the Revolutionary War- which reads, "And as our fallen foes retreat, I hear the drinking song they're singing..." followed by the repeated lyrics "The world turned upside down." This, and the lyrics that proceed it, are lifted from Chernow's biography upon which the show was based. However, there's no actual direct record of the British troops singing this song, but Lin-Manuel Miranda incorporates it as a major theme of this piece- it's even in the parenthetical of the song title.

This points toward a very interesting larger trend in the show, a trend of changing historical facts in the show. Maybe my title decrying the musical as a revisionist history was a bit extreme, but the point still remains. Many of the historical details in the show are either glossed over or completely changed. For instance, Philip Schuyler had many more children besides the three sisters we meet in the show, including several older sons. This fundamentally changes Angelica's motivation upon meeting Hamilton. She also was married when they met in real life, another huge change in the dynamic. Another lesser example was the fact that Alexander and Eliza had seven other children that (if I recall) aren't even mentioned, and definitely don't feature as strongly into the story as Philip.

These types of changes are not unique to Hamilton, however. Many historical films, such as Braveheart, Amadeus, Marie Antoinette, and The Imitation Game take massive liberties with telling true historical events. Many of these events fundamentally change the courses of the stories they're telling, which, initially, seems pretty dishonest.

But I think it's important to allow artists to take some creative liberties with historical events. All of the films I listed above received high praise, so it isn't like changing the events makes the films worse- if anything, the events are being changed to make the narrative better. The alterations that Miranda made to Hamilton didn't harm the narrative, they only made the story more focused and the character arcs more impactful. Historical revisionism is important, even if it initially seems misguided.