1776 (musical): Difference between revisions

Though light-hearted in many parts (it's almost impossible to get through the number about who will write the Declaration without laughing), it also contains poignant looks at how difficult decisions had to be made (the South viewed slavery as an economic necessity and walked out en masse upon hearing Jefferson, a fellow Southerner, condemn it). In addition, a report from a soldier on the front (the haunting "Look Sharp" number) drives home just how much (and yet how little) the piece of paper will mean.

 

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=== This work contains examples of the following tropes: ===

* [[Big Never]]: Adams does a few of these.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The film ends with the Declaration signed and an independence declared -- and years of a turbulent and desperate war that did not look winnable ahead of them. As Washington had mentioned, his army was in terrible shape, his money and credit were all gone, and the British had the strongest navy in the world. That bit in the Declaration about pledging "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" wasn't just emotionalism.

* [[Bowdlerise]]: Up until recently, the only version of the movie to reach TV was a severely-edited copy that obscured or completely removed many of the raunchier bits, including the whole "New Brunswick" sequence and the latter half of Franklin's "it's like calling an ox a bull" exchange with Dickinson. Even the version that hit the theatres was badly chopped, among other things excluding lines that made it clear Rutledge's opposition to the slavery clause was not due to mindless evil, but because he saw it as a betrayal of a promise that the independence faction would allow states to govern themselves as they saw fit.

* [[Catch Phrase]]

** [[Thomas Jefferson]]

** [[John Quincy Adams]] is referenced in one of Abigail's letters: like his siblings, he's come down with measles.

* [[Dirty Old Man]]: Franklin and Hopkins

* [[Distant Duet]]: John and Abigail's songs basically dramatize their letters to each other.

'''Lee:''' HELLLLOOOOO, JOHNNY! }}

* [[It's Personal]]: Lewis Morris of New York abstains ("Courteously!") from every vote since New York never told him what to vote for. Then when it comes time to sign the Declaration of Independence he finds out the British have seized and destroyed his home, his family has fled their state and his eldest sons have joined the Continental Army to fight the invaders. "To hell with New York. I'll sign it anyway!"

* [[Large Ham]]: Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson's fellow Virginian.

** Rutledge's song "Molasses to Rum" plants him firmly in ham territory.

** In the show's Broadway debut, this line got the biggest laugh out of all of them.

* [[Toilet Humor]]: "Rhode Island passes"; also the "calling an ox a bull" exchange.

** Similarly, every motion made on the floor of Congress, and every modification proposed or made to the Declaration (including the briefly heard objection about it not mentioning deep-sea fishing rights!) come directly from either the Congressional minutes or Jefferson's own notes from the revision of the Declaration into its final form.

** And even though the passage of the Declaration did not in actuality work out to a nail-biting final vote the way the movie portrays, Judge Wilson did in fact switch sides at the very last minute, changing Pennsylvania's vote from "nay" to "yea"; his reason for this has been debated by historians for decades.