Once more unto the speech, dear friends

the long version

There has been a great change over the last twenty years in actor auditions, which now require the demonstration of enormous flexibility. The actor is often expected to show more range than ever before, and often several shorter audition speeches are asked for instead of one or two longer ones. To stay at the top of his or her game, the Shakespearean actor needs more knowledge of what makes the play tick, especially since the early plays demand a different style from the later ones. Each genre (comedy, history, tragedy) has different requirements. Parts written for the older, more experienced actors require a different approach from those written for young actors, especially the female ones, played in Shakespeare's day by young actors extraordinarily skilled in the art of rhetoric.