Hamilton: The Parody


This weekend I went to see Hamilton in Chicago. It was amazing! The acting, singing, dancing, and humor left me with my jaw on the ground. When it comes to Detroit, I highly recommend going to see it.

While Hamilton was full of important scenes from the colonies around the time of the revolution, a musical about America's history would be simply incomplete without properly mocking Great Britain.

The playwright achieves this through the song "You'll be back" sung by the great, King George III. This song creates a parody of the relationship shared between the colonies and Britain at the time. Their relationship was often related to a mother son relationship in which Great Britain is the mother and the colonies is the son; however, in this rendition, Great Britain and the colonies are portrayed as a recently broken up couple.

King George acts as though the newly formed America has just broken up with him and he is not taking it well. He keeps telling the Americans that "[they'll] be back" and that he "will fight the fight and win the war for [their] love." He is so desperate for their "love" back after the Americans declare their independence.

My favorite line from the song is "cuz when push come to shove, I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love." I thought it was a humorous way to mock the British's way of trying to keep the colonies in line. They killed many colonists in attempts to keep them loyal to the British government, but that clearly did the opposite of what they intended.

The parody mocks Great Britain's longing for the colonists' loyalty in a humorous way and pokes fun at the methods used to try and keep the colonies under British rule. King George's character was definitely one of the fan favorite's because of the laughs he got out of each of his songs.


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