Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-Award Acceptance Sonnet
"And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love." At VOX , watch Lin-Manuel Miranda--star and creator of Broadway's Hamilton--accept the Tony Award for Best Score of a Musical (this was only one of the 11 awards Hamilton took home) with an emotional sonnet dedicated to the victims of Saturday night's tragedy in Orlando. Constance Grady reports:
Miranda has tended to rap his acceptance speeches at previous award shows (including this year's Grammys), so many expected he would do the same tonight.
But the composer had other ideas.
"I’m not freestyling, I’m too old," he declared at the top of his speech. "I wrote you a sonnet instead." In the ensuing poem he discussed his love for his wife, the Orlando shooting, and theater as a haven of tolerance and inclusivity — all in perfect iambic pentameter, through sobs. "The show is proof that history remembers," he said. "We live in times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall in light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer."
Miranda's speech was just part of the Tonys' respectful nod toward the victims of the Orlando shooting. Host James Corden opened the program with a speech on how the theater community rejects the violence of the shooting and hopes to be inclusive to all, while many attendees are wearing silver ribbons in tribute to those lost and injured.
Watch the speech below. CNN also has the full text.