Say No to This
song in the musical "Hamilton"
"Say No to This" is the fourth song from Act 2 of the musical Hamilton, based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, which premiered on Broadway in 2015. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote both the music and lyrics to the song. In this song, "Hamilton's eye begins wandering", as he has an affair with Maria Reynolds.
Background
According to Slate, the song "began with a quote from LL Cool J's "I Need Love"", but due to clearance issues from Atlantic Records, "the line was removed before the show's transition to Broadway".
Synopsis
The song outlines Alexander Hamilton's one-year adulterous affair with Maria Reynolds. Hamilton remains in New York City working on passing his plan for the creation of a national bank, his wife leaving to go on vacation upstate without him. While separated from his family, Hamilton is approached by Mrs. Reynolds, who claims her husband has abandoned her and asks Hamilton for financial aid before seducing him. Their adultery continues throughout the summer until Hamilton is contacted via letter by James Reynolds, who uses blackmail to coerce Hamilton to give him money for remaining silent about the affair. The affair and related blackmail later led to the first major political sex scandal in US history.
The public source identifies “Say No to This” as song in the musical "Hamilton". This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around song, musical and Hamilton.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q23763088. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Say No to This” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.