Hamilton earned a record 16 Tony nominations, yet nobody may license it
Lin-Manuel Miranda turned Ron Chernow's 2004 biography of a Founding Father into a musical that is sung and rapped from start to finish. Hamilton won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and collected a record 16 Tony nominations. Yet as of 2026, no amateur or professional company has been granted a licence to stage it.
Miranda wrote the music, lyrics and book, and played the title role when the show opened off-Broadway at the Public Theater in Lower Manhattan on February 17, 2015. That run sold out and took eight Drama Desk Awards. On August 6, 2015, it began a Broadway run at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, and at the 70th Tony Awards it converted its nominations into 11 wins, Best Musical among them.
Across two acts the story follows an orphan who leaves St. Croix for New York, meets Aaron Burr, John Laurens and Lafayette as a King's College student in 1776, and becomes George Washington's aide-de-camp. He marries Eliza Schuyler while her sister Angelica hides her own feelings, later serves as Treasury Secretary, and clashes with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in rap-battle cabinet meetings over finance and over whether to help France against Britain.
Burr narrates most of it, and his rivalry with Hamilton drives the ending. Hamilton's own publication of the Reynolds Pamphlet, admitting an affair to fend off corruption charges, damages his career. His backing of Jefferson over Burr in the 1800 election tips Burr into issuing a challenge. On the duelling ground Hamilton fires into the air, Burr's shot kills him, and Burr laments that history will cast him as the villain.
The final number hands the story to Eliza, who spends her remaining years guarding her husband's memory: gathering veterans' recollections, raising money for the Washington Monument, speaking against slavery and founding New York City's first private orphanage. Beyond Broadway, the London staging at the Victoria Palace Theatre opened on December 21, 2017, and won seven Olivier Awards; a German translation opened in Hamburg in October 2022; and a filmed version reached Disney+ in 2020.
Source: Hamilton (musical)
