On Nov. 16, United States Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a showing of the hit U.S. American Broadway musical Hamilton as the audience booed him. Later, as he got up to leave, actor Brandon Dixon, who plays Vice President Aaron Burr in the play, alongside other Hamilton cast members, called on Mr Pence, “emphasizing the need for the new administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump … to work on behalf of all [U.S.] Americans.”

President-elect Trump later commented in a series of tweets, “Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!” and then subsequently, “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” and finally, “The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior.” Of course, many have never given a serious thought to anything Donald Trump says — look where that got us — but now, regardless of whether he is President-elect or not, these comments seem to invite some contemplation.

It is an interesting contention that the theater is a "safe and special place". Let us think about The Merchant of Venice as an example. The merchant of Venice is a Christian named Antonio in Protestant England, who is indebted to Shylock, a Jew, for a loan he takes for his friend Bassanio. Shylock in turn asks for the collateral of "an equal pound // of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken // in what part of your body pleaseth me." Later, Antonio defaults on the loan, but it is Shylock who pays when Bassanio's newlywed wife Portia outsmarts him by specifying the terms of their deal — Shylock must take a pound of flesh, no more, no less. If even a drop of blood were to spill, he would be executed. The play ends with Shylock's properties being confiscated and handed over in half to Antonio, and with Bassanio and Portia celebrating their new marriage — after all, the play is titled The Merchant of Venice and not The Tragedy of the Jew in Venice.

The theater seems then to be a highly polarized space, even before it interacts with the audience. In Shakespeare’s time, the Jew was its victim, even if many would argue that Shakespeare was a product of his time rather than a conscious racist. All the same, it seems that the theater is a space full of moral and social judgments, of polarized social themes, of sometimes inexplicable social constraints. An audience member in Shakespeare’s time certainly conferred moral judgment on the Jew, and it is plausible to think that he celebrated the comedic climax in which Antonio is saved and Shylock persecuted.

The Hamilton incident — call it Hamilton-gate — is no different from the kind of moral transactions we see present in The Merchant of Venice. Hamilton: An American Musical is itself a wildly political show, a biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Born out of wedlock in the New World in the 1750s, Hamilton goes on to become George Washington’s right-hand man and founder of the U.S. financial system, before being killed in a duel by his political and personal opponent, then-Vice President Aaron Burr. Among the most interesting aspects of the show is that each of these white, property-owning men are played by colored actors. Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda himself is of Puerto Rican descent, while African-American Daveed Diggs played notorious slave owner and Founding Father of the United States Thomas Jefferson.

The point is this: certainly, even within that sphere, before the theater even interacts with its audience, there are moral values and judgments being practiced. It is plausible to think that there are those in the United States who are appalled by the fact that their beloved Founding Fathers are played by colored actors — that George Washington is played by an African-American man, and that the current Alexander Hamilton is an openly gay Puerto Rican cancer survivor who has been living with HIV/AIDS since 2002. Certainly, with the rise of the alt-right movement helmed by Richard Spencer — who has emerged as a new kind of Hitler for white supremacists — there is no doubt that there are moral values within and around the play that are completely removed from the moral foundations of some portions of the U.S. American populace.

When the Marquis de Lafayette says to Alexander Hamilton, “Immigrants — we get the job done!” Richard Spencer probably scrunches his forehead and tightens his fists. So when Vice President-elect (Mike Pence) — who has in the past opposed marriage equality citing his religious values and has opposed laws intended to prohibit workplace discrimination against the LGBT community, and who is now well on his way to occupy the White House following a heated and controversial presidential campaign — attends the showing of a play like Hamilton, he becomes part of the play’s moral universe by being a part of the same interpretive community that the play’s audience is part of. The theater is not a safe and special place: it is a highly-conflicted place, where people from various moral, social and cultural foundations clash. Of course, the form of the play and the state of our societies will dictate how we treat such people. If Mike Pence were a Jew in Elizabethan England at a showing of The Merchant of Venice, then perhaps one of the actors would have called from the stage — much less respectfully than did Brandon Dixon — Mike Pence, Jew, we are the Christian England who are alarmed and anxious that your greed will empty our banks.