ARE YOU READY FOR A “HAMILTON” SORTING?
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton serve as both foils and mirrors to each other throughout the play, and this holds true in their Sortings as well. They come from different places in terms of class and privilege, but their childhoods are both marked with the traumatic and tragic loss of their parents. They respond differently to this grief, however. Hamilton’s loss and uncertainty harm his Primary (his WHY) while Burr’s harm his Secondary (his HOW).
Hamilton is a Slytherin Primary, who prioritizes himself, his ambitions, and (eventually) the people he loves above all, and a Gryffindor Secondary, who achieves things with a forthrightness and loudness that both makes him enemies and encourages fellow believers to flock in his wake. Just look at Hurricane. Anyone who sees a brimming political sex scandal and says, “You know what I should do? TELL EVERYONE EVERYTHING!” —Well, they’re probably a Gryffindor Secondary.
Hamilton takes his damage to his Slytherin Primary—he “petrifies”. He cuts himself off to connection. He doesn’t do it particularly well or particularly thoroughly—Laurens and Washington slip in, and Phillip is loved fully and fearlessly by his father—but Hamilton’s general response to trauma is to step back. When Laurens dies, he throws himself into his work. An exception comes when Phillip dies, because Hamilton has grown enough and learned enough by then that he manages to turn to Eliza instead of disappearing inside himself completely.
While Hamilton does bond to his revolutionary drinking buddy trio of Mulligan, Laurens, and Lafayette, that bond is made with his Gryffindor Secondary, initially, not his still rather-charred Slytherin Primary. He likes their drive and their cause; he likes their bravery, and he wants to fight alongside them. Young Alexander—abandoned, orphaned, his town destroyed, and yet smarter than almost everyone he’s ever met—is living almost fully in his Gryffindor Secondary alone, at this point. He defines himself by the way he stands on tables, tears apart British loyalists in the street, scoffs at Burr’s caution, and how he will not throw away his shot.
There is often an inherent selfishness in how Hamilton interacts with the war, with love, and with his work. This is about glory; this is about legacy. Don’t be surprised when your history books mention me. He interacts with the world most fully with his Gryffindor Secondary’s brash volume, certainty, and leadership; but he is still driven by the death-obsessed ambition of his Primary, of an orphan kid who never expected to live past twenty.
Burr, however— Well, he can keep all of Georgia. Theodosia, she’s mine. Burr, like Hamilton, is a Slytherin Primary, but losing his family has not injured his belief in or comfort with those he loves, like the Theodosias, or dampened his desire for bonding with them. He still puts his Theodosias, and his own success, above all else. His methods, though, are nearly absent: He is waiting for it.
Love doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes, and it takes, and it takes. And we keep loving anyway. Burr comprehends, deeply, the chaotic, unfair, and destructive nature of life, love, and death. But unlike Hamilton, it doesn’t make him afraid of bonding, loving, or committing. It makes Burr afraid of acting.
While Hamilton has “burned” his Primary, Burr has burnt his Secondary. Where Hamilton’s early losses have made him wary of investing in people with his Slytherin Primary, Burr’s early losses made him wary of acting, of claiming any Secondary at all. When Hamilton thrives and succeeds on the certainty and brashness of his Gryffindor Secondary, Burr, confused and jealous, watches Alexander rise and tells himself that he is content to “wait for it”.
Burr recommends caution, keeping your cards close to your chest; he is afraid to invest in action in the same way Alexander takes so long to truly invest in Eliza. Hamilton chooses to live nearly fully in just the part of himself that acts, whereas Burr decides, instead, to divorce from him that part of himself. This inherent mismatch between them is one of the places that leads to their lifelong nonunderstanding of each other and their eventual deadly conflict.
Laurens, lovely Gryff/Gryff, is the one who begins the “rise up” part of My Shot. Laurens and Lafayette are here for the fight, for the cause; and the way they talk about the war shows that. Tell your brother that he’s gotta rise up.
Mulligan and Hamilton are just as invested in the fight—both willing to fight and die for a cause technically outside themselves—but for different reasons. We sort Mulligan as a Slytherin Primary as well: I’m the joining the rebellion ’cause I know it’s my chance to socially advance instead of sewing some pants.
Hamilton’s repeated crowd-raiser is Hey, yo, I’m just like my country—I’m young, scrappy, and hungry. He invests in the fight by making it about himself; about the ways his country is him; about what this fight will do for him. He makes it personal. Hamilton still genuinely cares about the fight. He fights tooth and nail for Washington, for the fledgling America, for manumission, for his bank and the foundations of this new nation. But Slytherins can do that! Having your first priorities be yourself and those you love doesn’t keep you from caring, deeply and broadly, about right and wrong, about freedom, financial systems, and victory.
Hamilton cares about the new nation he helped found because it is his: because it is where he lives; because it gave him a chance; because it is what he will leave to his children. He and Burr, as Slytherin Primaries both particularly devoted to their children, touch on this in Dear Theodosia: You will come of age with our young nation. We’ll bleed and fight for you. We’ll make it right for you. If we lay a strong enough foundation, we’ll pass it on to you.
Laurens, through the abolitionist fervor and Gryffindor Secondaries they share, and Washington, in his position of commander and mentor, are the first to start to slip through the cracks in Alexander’s traumatized Slytherin Primary. Both of them sneak in via his Gryffindor’s drive and fight—every day is a test of our camaraderie and bravery, as Laurens tells us.
Eliza knows where she stands here, even if she wishes for more. When she wants Alexander to come home, she doesn’t write to him; she writes to General Washington. I knew you’d fight until the war was won. With a childhood of hardship and losses that makes him guarded and self-focused, Hamilton is still prioritizing his own fight and his own glory over most other things.
It is Phillip who breaks through this fully. In Yorktown, Alexander begins his repeated theme of ‘I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory’—only to have that interrupted by a callback to Eliza’s That Would Be Enough: Then I remember my Eliza’s expecting me. Not only that, my Eliza’s expecting! We gotta go, gotta get the job done; gotta start a new nation; gotta meet my son! His thirst for glory and death is finally drowned out (if somewhat momentarily) by the promise of his son’s life. It is Phillip, too, who is what can pull him out of his work (again, only momentarily) in Take a Break. It is Phillip’s little rap which fully brings Alexander into delighted life here: Hey, our kid is pretty great. Angelica and Eliza cannot convince him to come upstate; Eliza can barely convince him to come to dinner on time, but it is undeniable that this man loves his son. And interestingly, it is Phillip’s death which drives Alexander to finally see, and love, and turn to Eliza fully for the very first time in It’s Quiet Uptown.
Eliza, too, is a Slytherin Primary. She is every bit as ambitious and driven as the louder Slytherin souls of Alexander, Burr, and Angelica. But she wants Alexander (the boy is mine!), and her ambitions are quiet, domestic, and certain: We don’t need a legacy. We don’t need money. If I could grant you peace of mind, if you could let me inside your heart…that would be enough.
Eliza is a Foundational Secondary in a play whose plot often turns on the decisions of Improvisational Secondaries (brave Gryffindor, flexible Slytherin). “Foundational” Secondaries are the builders, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, who earn things by working slowly and smartly and capably, and not giving up. Hufflepuffs build things out of work ethic, reputation, kindnesses, or reliability. There are many flavors of Puff Secondary, but the word “dependable” often lurks at the bottom of them. —“Stubborn”, too.
(Ravenclaw [Secondaries], in contrast, are collectors, learners, hoarders; they collect skills, knowledge, and even power, building systems or resources they can use, whereas Hufflepuff Secondaries tend to build systems or resources they can rely on.)
Eliza is reliable, a Hufflepuff Secondary and a particularly subtle one. The gifts she wants to give Hamilton are peace of mind and to be a part of his narrative. She spends her fifty years after his death building his legacy with a capable, consistent, and loving hand. She speaks to every soldier who fought with him; tries to make sense of all his thousands of pages of writing: When my time is up, have I done enough?
Eliza’s sister, Angelica, is one of the most beautiful Slytherin Primaries we’ve seen in years. She loves Eliza more than anything in this life and she will choose her sister’s happiness over her own, every time. (Including her romantic interest, which is rare and beautiful.) Angelica knows what she wants, goes after what she wants (The Schuyler Sisters), but at the end of the day, she will always put her loved ones first.
Alexander has not been prioritizing Eliza, despite his sweet promises in Helpless. There’s argument that those were not deeply meant; Hamilton has long been prioritizing himself, his legacy, and his fight above his wife. Angelica’s confrontation with Alexander after The Reynolds Pamphlet, especially if you include the cut material from the song Congratulations, is one of two Slytherin Primaries who love the same woman—and one who is disgusted with the poor way the other has been living up to that love.
In Congratulations, Angelica lays Alexander out. She recognizes the Slytherin in Alexander, and Eliza is so deeply enmeshed in Angelica’s priorities that she demands Alexander live up to that, too. Eliza is the best thing in our lives, so never lose sight of the fact that you have been blessed with the best wife!
One of Eliza’s recurring lines is a wish that Hamilton would let her into his heart. He hasn’t, and he doesn’t fully until It’s Quiet Uptown. (When we hit Best of Wives and Best of Women, she’s fully in [his heart], and his is the warm love of a Slytherin Primary, and yes, everyone please cry now.)
Angelica is a Slytherin Secondary as well as a Slytherin Primary: I romanticize what might have been if I hadn’t sized him up so quickly. Angelica laments here that she sized up Hamilton and the situation with Eliza too quickly; her swift reading and analysis of the scene is the reactive assessment of a Slytherin Secondary. Slytherin is the cunning House: the adapter, the slitherer, and the improviser. This can give you characters who run on slime and ooze or ones like caustic, casual, and capable Jefferson; but also adaptive, quick, and clever ones, like Angelica, who makes calls before she even realizes what she’s realized.
Angelica’s intentions to achieve political change by influencing the influential are clear from her first song: And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I’mma compel him to include women in the sequel. This approach demonstrates both her awareness of her status as a woman in this society (I’m a girl in a world in which my only job is to marry rich; my father has no sons, so I’m the one who has to social climb, for one), and her intent to be opportunistic and effective with the power that she does hold.
Our other major Slytherin Secondary in the show is Daveed Diggs’s masterful Thomas Jefferson, who jazzes onto the stage in the second act. Got my first cabinet meeting today, guess I better think of something to say. Jefferson is sharp and clever, an improviser at heart, which is a handy characterization in a musical that borrows so much from a culture and tradition of freestyle rap. His Slytherin Secondary is one of the few things that can go toe-to-toe with Hamilton’s brilliant—and equally improvisational—Gryffindor Secondary.
We don’t get too much of Jefferson’s Primary, but from his somewhat aloof stability, his adaptability, and his idealistic commitment to the promises the young USA had made to Lafayette and France, we’re erring towards a Ravenclaw Primary for him.
No strong opinions on Madison over here (other than his voice is astounding). Foundational (Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw) Secondary, probably? Hufflepuff Primary?
The quick wits and fast-talking of “Hamilton” lend well to a wealth of Improvisational Secondaries: the transformative, creative Slytherin Secondary (Jefferson, Angelica) and the brash, inspirational Gryffindor Secondary (Hamilton, Laurens, Mulligan). Even Burr at least pretends to have them; he “performs” a sort of Slytherin Secondary-thing as his cautious, shifty Act One self, and then in Act Two, Burr adopts a Gryffindor Secondary performance that he borrowed from Hamilton—which Hamilton promptly and publicly refutes (The Election of 1800).
Eliza is one of our major examples of a nice, steady Hufflepuff Secondary: She is certain and patient in what she wants, and she will work at it until the end of her days (Paciencia y fe, anyone?). But our other major Hufflepuff Secondary is George Washington. While he has a great admiration and trust in the forthrightness of Hamilton’s Gryffindor (and occasionally a great deal of long-suffering headaches, too, I’m sure), Washington himself rocks a gritty Hufflepuff Secondary that carries much of the war on its determined back.
Washington will not give up. He will work till it’s done. He will do his duty. Unlike Hamilton, Washington does not feel obligated to wear his opinions on his sleeve; indeed, if anything, Washington feels a great and pressing need to keep to himself, to think of posterity (Can I be real a second? For just a millisecond? Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?). History has its eyes on him—and he knows it.
It’s not a universal truth, but there is a markèd tendency for Hufflepuff Secondaries to put a greater stock, focus, and awareness on reputation. A consistency of work and purpose—and the powers and effects of the reputation that comes with that (as well as the results of the work)—are a major part of the strength of a Hufflepuff Secondary. Eliza and Washington are the two characters with both the most self-awareness and the most awareness of their place in the historical narrative.
Washington, tempered by his disastrous early attempts at war and his concern for posterity (History Has Its Eyes on You), is one of the harder Primaries to pin down. We think he’s a Hufflepuff Primary, hid a bit under the Gryffindor-smelling trappings of someone in an effective leadership position. He puts such a strong emphasis on group cohesion, on responding to Alexander’s “I’s” and “you’s” with “we’s”. ‘The nation’ is something he wants to be part of, perhaps even more than something he believes in. When he’s setting up his cabinet in Non-Stop, he explains it as “The people are asking me to lead. I’m doing the best I can.” This is about people and about duty, not about right and wrong.
Washington’s a tough Sort because he’s one of the more careful characters in the play when it comes to presentation to the audience—Burr, of course, is massively careful in his presentation to the world, but songs like Wait for It and The Room Where It Happens mean we humble listeners feel like we know him pretty well by the end of it all. Washington plays it a little closer to the chest… Burr, didn’t you know History would have its eyes on you? Well, Tumblr has, anyway…
Hamilton, Burr, Eliza, Angelica, and Mulligan share ambitious and loyal Slytherin Primaries (well, Hamilton’s is a bit charred around the edges, but wouldn’t you be, after his life?). (Also, Lin-Manuel, yes, we completely believe you’re a Slytherin, goodness gracious. You write them beautifully.)
Laurens and Lafayette are Gryffindor Primaries. Washington is a Hufflepuff Primary.
Laurens and Mulligan (I NEED NO INTRODUCTION!) both share Hamilton’s charging Gryffindor Secondary, while Washington is as steady a Puff Secondary as Eliza.
Burr, despite a hale and hearty and loving Slytherin Primary at his core, is as damaged by his losses and life as Hamilton, who for so long stays so wary of really bonding himself to the people around him (or, honestly, living in general). But Burr took that damage to his Secondary instead; he has chosen to wait and not act. (He has, perhaps, the last vestiges of a Hufflepuff Secondary, but too wary to really invest in anything?)
Jefferson is our lone Ravenclaw Primary (probably?), but he shares Angelica’s quick and powerful Slytherin Secondary.
