MORE ABOUT OUR PROJECT
This project currently focuses on the lyrics in the musical
Hamilton: An American Musical. In regards to characters, we are looking
specifically at who is talking the most in the musical versus who is talked about
the most and who individual characters are referencing. Learning more about who a
character talks about and is connected with can give us a better understanding of
relationships between characters.
Another aspect we're looking at in-depth is the repeated words found
throughout multiple songs. There are several lines that are present in three or more
songs. These phrases contribute towards characterization, the story, and themes
present throughout the musical. We will look at where these phrases appear and track
when they appear the most or don't appear at all in regards to the overall
story.
Along with the musical's characters and themes, we decided to
investigate the historical accuracy of the musical by researching specific lyrics.
We were interested in finding out if the musical was more factual or more fictional,
so we selected over 100 lyrics to research to determine the historical accuracy of
Hamilton: An American Musical.
Other elements we're interested in include dates and places. We've
created an interactive Google Map which features all the places mentioned in
Hamilton and in the description of each waypoint is a list of the songs
that particular place is referenced. We've also created a timeline which has each
song's events dated by year. We've also included a more in-depth description of the
events with exact or estimated dates to establish a specific time frame for the
musical.
MEET THE TEAM
AUDREY HUNKER
A student at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Audrey Hunker is
pursuing a major in Creative and Professional Writing and a Digital Studies
Certficate. She is an original member of The Lope de Vega Project team and a founding member and
leader of The Hamilton Project team. Her go-to song from Hamilton to
perform in the car is "You'll Be Back."
BRI FILER
Bri Filer
is a student at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburgh, majoring in
Creative and Professional Writing, minoring in English Literature, and pursuing
a Digital Studies Certificate. She is a founding member of the Hamilton Project
team. Her go-to song from Hamilton to rap along to is "My Shot."
METHODOLOGY
Mark-up Process:
To start the project, we took the lyrics for the musical off of the
Atlantic Records website and decided to mark them up using TEI. From there we
created an ODD to identify which TEI elements we would be using in our project.
Within the ODD we created Schemas that would fire on our attributes specific to
phrases and names so no spelling errors would occur. and we used regular expressions
to accurately tag all the elements we were planning to look further into during
analysis. After tagging up all key elements and turning all the lyric text files
into XML that kept the song's original format, the song's XML files were transformed
using XSLT into HTML files featuring a JavaScript checklist box to highlight all the
names, dates, phrases, and places in each song.
Frequency of Character References and Speeches Network Graphs:
One question we had while analysing the lyrics was about how often
characters spoke in the musical and how often characters were referenced in the
musical. We further wanted to investigate who references who as well to see which
characters discuss each other and to see which characters talk about themselves. In
order to investigate this, a directed network graph was created in Cytoscape to show
the indegree of how often a character is referenced which is represented by the size
of the nodes in the graph and the outdegree of how often a character speaks which is
represented by the color of the nodes in the graph. To compile the information,
XQuery was used to grab all distinct speakers and look down to see specific
references to characters the speaker made throughout the entire musical. A TSV was
saved from the output data and that was imported into cytoscape to compile the
graph. In Cytoscape the edges which related to each song in the musical were bundled
to help provide better readability. Another graph was created without bundling the
edges to create separate network graphs for each song to show which characters
referenced who in each song. A personography table, created using XSLT, lists the
distinct names of people refenced by that character, who references that character,
and the number of times that character is referenced.
Line Graph and Table of Repeated Phrases
One of the goals of the project was to track repeated words/phrases
within the musical. We chose eight distinct phrases: my shot, satisifed, helpless,
wait, legacy, time, look around, and rise (up). For more information as to why we
chose these phrases, please click here. To
investigate the frequency of these phrases, we created a line graph that would track
each phrase in each song over the entire musical. Using XSLT to run over our
collection of XML versions of the songs, we created an SVG graph. A corresponding
table was created in the same fasion.
Map of Places Mentioned in Hamilton: An American Musical
To gain a better understanding of the more historical side of the
musical, we chose to create a map that would visualize all the places mentioned in
Hamilton. XQuery was used to grab the distinct place names and we used a
GPS Visualizer to obtain the geo co-ordinates in the form of a KML file. Using
XQuery, a second KML file was produced that contained each place name and the list
of songs that place appeared in. From there, an XSLT transformation combined the two
KML files into one, which was uploaded onto Google Maps and embedded on our
page.
Bar Graph of Fact, Fiction, and Ambiguity in the Lyrics
In order to determine the historical accuracy of the musical, we first
had to select lyrics to investigate. We selected certain lines that raised questions
of authenticity or suggested further research. After selecting the lyrics, we
primarily referred to Ron Chernow's biography on Alexander Hamilton that the
musical's creator, Lin Manuel Miranda, used when writing the musical. After our
research, the data was formed into a bar graph created using SVG to show the
percentage of factual, fictional, or ambiguous lyrics.
Timeline of Hamilton: An American Musical
As we were interested in the historical accuracy of the musical, we
decided to look into the specific dates mentioned in the songs. From the dates
already supplied in the song lyrics, each song was looked over and had relevant
events mentioned within the lyrics researched. After finding dates or estimations
for the dates of events, we added a list event element into the XML for each song
marking up the specific events, dates, and descriptions. Once every song had a list
event element added, the songs were uploaded to eXistdb and using XQuery we created
a timeline in SVG. We only grabbed the years in XQuery and created our timeline to
represent the repeating years as larger circles on the timeline.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
For our project we resourced the lyrics from Atlantic
Records. The online tools we used to collect information and create
visualizations for this project include eXistdb, used to
create the timeline,Cytoscape, used in
creating network graphs, Voyant, to help
identify recurring phrases, and GPS
Visualizer and Google Maps, to
create the map. All images were resourced from Google Images.
In our research regarding historical accuracy, we referred mainly to the biography
"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow. The book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to
write "Hamilton: An American Musical", it was interesting to see what Mirand chose
to keep historically accurate and what he chose to change in his stage adaption.
We love Hamilton and have thoroughly enjoyed creating this site
and discovering new things about the musical. If you're interested in learning more
than what we have to offer check out these sites which provide more information
about the musical or analysis of the lyrics: