Ms. St John's thoughts on The Hunchback of Notre Dame:
This musical has so much to unpack. We all want a nice and tidy story with a good guy and a bad guy and a resolution to a conflict that teaches us a lesson. Hunchback is not that show.
This show makes me think about right and wrong. Frollo thinks that he is a good person. He lives by the rules of the church...until he doesn't. Frollo does not see himself as the villain. He has lived in a world where the "other" is perceived as a punishment for wickedness. In Frollo's mind, Quasimodo is the result of God punishing Jehan for his bad behavior. Frollo thinks that he is doing Quasimodo a favor by keeping him away from the cruelty of the world. He also believes that Esmeralda needs to be saved from the sinful life of her people. He thinks that he is the good guy right up until the end of his solo, Hellfire, when he says "God have mercy on me, she will be mine or she will burn."
Esmeralda is not innocent. She is part of the Romani people, who during this time, were seen as outcasts. They were nomadic people. They often had to resort to illegal activities to get by. They were seen as thieves and were not to be trusted. This was compounded by the fact that they would often feign injury to garner pity while begging for coin. This subterfuge is the basis of the idea of the "Court of Miracles", where those who used crutches and eyepatches outside would not need them here. She is not chaste, which is it's own sin at that time.
Phoebus is a soldier for France against the country of Burgundy. This was a land grab by King Louis XI after some disagreements about the inheritance of lands following the death of Charles the Bold, of the Hapsburgs. Phoebus has a bit of PTSD from his experiences on the front. He and his fellow soldiers remember the "stink of bodies in a trench". He is also quite the ladies' man, and has frequented the tavern so often that the proprieter knows him by name. You can hear Esmeralda's disdain for Phoebus when she mentions him "burying your friends in unmarked graves" He is a deeply flawed man, but is trying hard to be better.
Clopin is a career criminal. He is portrayed as morally bankrupt, exploiting his people (specifically the females) for profit. They steal for him and commit other crimes against Parisians. Frollo is not wrong to want him out of his city. However, deep down, Clopin does care about his people and wants them to thrive. He just doesn't care how that goal is achieved.
Jehan can't seem to follow the rules of his place of residence and chooses instead to drink heavily and lie about his whereabouts. He dies of "the pox". which is likely smallpox, but could be any variety of illnesses that were common in medieval Paris. Deep down, Jehan just wants freedom.
Quasimodo is seen as innocent, but at the end of the show, murders countless soldiers and his only caretaker in an act of revenge. He claims sanctuary (a law allowing those accused of a crime to stay safely inside the church for up to 40 days while preparing their defense and their soul) but then breaks it moments later, greusomely dumping molten lead on the heads of the cathedral guard, burning them alive. He also tosses his uncle off the bell tower, killing him.
Even the gargoyles have evil inside them, when they tell Quasimodo "yes you do" in the finale.
The Latin that appears at both ends of the musical "Olim Deus accelere. Hoc saeculum spledidum. Accelere fiat venire olim". translates beautifully to
"one day, god, make haste this bright world, make haste to come one day." It is a prayer for better times to come someday. My question to you is this: are we there yet?
There is no tidy morsel of truth in this show. It shows that though people can be deeply flawed, they can all have good qualities as well. This is an unpopular truth of humanity. It reminds me of the addage about the two wolves living inside each of us. One wolf is good. One is evil. They fight a battle each day, and the one who will ultimately win is the one you choose to feed. We are all both right and wrong. We all have both good and evil within us. It makes you wonder, "What makes a monster and what makes a man?"
