While many of the high-profile Hamilton audience members have tended toward the musical and/or political spheres, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical seems to have surprise celebrity guests at nearly every show. For instance, The Kingkiller Chronicle author Patrick Rothfuss popped backstage this weekend for a selfie with a starstruck Miranda.
Look how excited he is! Miranda tweeted the photo with the caption “The @PatrickRothfuss came through and it was as glorious as I’d hoped. Earned my pipes.” No surprise, considering that a few months ago, Miranda shared some of his lesser-known inspiration for Hamilton: “The Story Of Tonight is me trying to capture the feel of Kvothe & his friends leaving the Eaolian.” The passage in question, from Chapter 59 (All This Knowing) of The Name of the Wind:
In the fullness of time, and with considerable help from Deoch and Wilem, I became drunk.
Thus it was that three students made their slightly erratic way back to the University. See them as they go, weaving only slightly. It is quiet, and when the belling tower strikes the late hour, it doesn’t break the silence so much as it underpins it. The crickets, too, respect the silence. Their calls are like careful stitches in its fabric, almost too small to be seen.
The night is like warm velvet around them. The stars, burning diamonds in the cloudless sky, turn the road beneath their feet a silver grey. The University and Imre are the hearts of understanding and art, the strongest of the four corners of civilization. Here on the road between the two there is nothing but old trees and long grass bending to the wind. The night is perfect in a wild way, almost terrifyingly beautiful.
The three boys, one dark, one light, and one—for lack of a better word—fiery, do not notice the night. Perhaps some part of them does, but they are young, and drunk, and busy knowing deep in their hearts that they will never grow old or die. They also know that they are friends, and they share a certain love that will never leave them. The boys know many other things, but none of them seem as important as this. Perhaps they are right.
And some lyrics from “The Story of Tonight”:
Hamilton
I may not live to see our glory!Lafayette/Mulligan/Laurens
I may not live to see our glory!Hamilton
But I will gladly join the fight!Lafayette/Mulligan/Laurens
But I will gladly join the fight!Hamilton
And when our children tell our story…Lafayette/Mulligan/Laurens
And when our children tell our story…Hamilton
They’ll tell the story of tonightMulligan
Let’s have another round tonightLafayette
Let’s have another round tonightHamilton
Let’s have another round tonightLaurens
Raise a glass to freedom
Something they can never take away
No matter what they tell you
Raise a glass to the four of usLaurens/Mulligan
Tomorrow there’ll be more of usMulligan/Lafayette/Laurens
Telling the story of tonight
Another fun fact: “When the Sun Goes Down” from In the Heights is based on a key moment near the end of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Even more reason to love Lin-Manuel Miranda—he freely points to his inspirations, no matter how disparate.
