I’m putting this here because it was the musical Hamilton that made me think how little sense the affair made. I mean in the sense of why you would do it and if it even happened.
So let me walk you through this:
The musical says he was tired and he hadn’t slept and he was seduced. And then they carried on an affair.
(I’m now relating how it really happened, in case you see little discrepancies between IRL and Hamilton) So you meet this woman and she says she needs money and her husband beats her. Hamilton doesn’t have the money on him so he gets the money and brings it to her. And there she seduces him. HORSESHIT. That has ‘trap’ written all over it. He either went there thinking, 'Damn, she’s fine. I’m gonna hit that." Or at the very least saw she was responsive to his charms.
Fine. You had a one night stand. No one needs to know. Wait what??? You’re going to have an extended affair with her??? And continue to do so after her husband blackmails you??? This makes zero sense given his place, job and happy marriage. (yes i know people do stupid affair shit all the time)
If the affair happened, then yes, that was almost certainly the case.
I grant Occams Razor probably points at the affair happening. I was just taken with how my gut feeling of ‘this makes little sense’ squared with Tilar Mazzeos book theorizing with “Maybe it didn’t happen at all.”
From the Hamilton biography, the affair definitely happened, but Hamilton was not quite as innocent as shown in the play. Remember, Martha Washington named a feral tomcat Hamilton. The real problem was that Hamilton botched things when it was exposed, which was also far more complicated than shown in the play.
Don’t derive history from the musical, read the biography. Much as I love the musical.