NY Public Library for the Performing Arts Curator Doug Reside on Homophones and Lyrics

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Doug Reside (Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre Division) on Homophones and Lyrics:

As I write this, the Hamilton cast recording has just been released for online streaming and has inspired the nationally trending Twitter hashtag, #Hamiltunes. Lin-Manuel Miranda asked his fans to use the tag as they listened to the album so he could virtually listen along with them, and he seemed especially happy to see listeners catch the hidden references he embedded in the score. He acknowledged his nod to Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years ("Nobody Needs to Know") and his self-quote of In The Heights ("the spending spree" line in "My Shot" that echoes a line in "96,000") were entirely intentional, and seemed delighted listeners noticed them. At this moment, there is a kind of frantic hunt on Twitter to identify the Les Miserables reference Miranda has mentioned is hidden in the piece.

Most of the "easter eggs" found thus far are direct lyrical or musical quotations of other songs. Last month, though, Miranda mentioned that there are even more obscure lyrical references such as homophonic tribute to Hamilton's music director Alex Lacamoire in the phrase "Lack of moral compass" (Lackamoire-all compass) in the cut John Adams rap (preserved in a YouTube video of a talk-back at the Public Theater). Miranda aptly called this a "Hirschfeld Nina"--a reference to theatre caricaturist Al Hirschfeld's well-known practice of working his daughter Nina's name into the lines of his sketches. Miranda claims there are many such "Ninas" in the text of Hamilton. Miranda's lyrics verbally underline one such homophone in the final duel in which Hamilton, about to be fatally shot, reflects on his life and sings snippets of the rest of the score. He sings the early Act I chorus "Rise up!" several times until the middle sounds of the phrase linguistically morphs into the name of his wife "Eliza!"

While lyrical homophones are more commonly used in hip-hop lyrics than in musicals, a few of the cleverest Broadway lyricists have made use of them. Often the homophones are as intentionally obvious as the "Rise Up"/"Eliza" pair. In Rent, the delirious and dying Mimi sings, "Don't waste your money on me me me [Mimi]." Jack's mother in Into the Woods tells her son that the cow Milky White's "Withers wither with her." In these cases, the audience is expected to catch the homophone immediately--the repetition of the same sound with a different meanings tickles the mind in the same way a clever rhyme might.

Not all homophones are intended, though. In his book of collected lyrics Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim writes with dismay that a critic misheard his Follies lyric "Beauty celestial, the best you'll agree" as "Beauty celestial, the bestial agree." Unintentional though it may have been, the homophone does suggest that the audiences of tired businessmen who attended the kinds of shows in which the characters in Follies once appeared were not always the most enlightened sort. Similarly, although Sondheim is annoyed by the mishearing, he admits that when he first saw Carousel he himself heard "June is busting out all over" as "Julie's busting out all over" (referring to the character Julie Jordan's pregnancy).

When I first listened to "Climbing Uphill" on the cast album of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, I heard Cathy sing "Your hand will touch my face / and banish any trace of grace. / Soon..." rather than Brown's published lyric "banish any trace of gray / Soon..." This may be as unintended as Sondheim's "bestial/best you'll" line, but given that "gray" must combine with the next word ("soon") to rhyme with "face" and "trace"; that Cathy prays "Grant me grace" a few moments later; and that Cathy seems to believe that simply being physically present with Jamie would resolve their relationship difficulties (a belief shown to be faulty in the song "See I'm Smiling"), I suspect Brown intended the homophone.

Although I've journeyed through the Hamilton cast recording several times since it was released, I have not yet caught any others "Ninas," but I admit Miranda's "top-notch brain" likely has buried many deeper than I've yet been able to dig. I will keep listening though, for it is this sort of complexity and artistry that makes musicals like Hamilton such a joy to experience over and over again.