‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ for High School Thespian : Education: The San Pedro youth wins a trip to New York for the finals of the National Shakespeare Competition.

One performer mocked virginity. Another stood drenched in blood after her husband stabbed his rival to death. A third vowed to seek fame through cruel revenge.

Nope, this was not the work of some avant-garde playwright whose funding request was turned down by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This was the immortal Bard himself, performed Saturday night by high school students vying for thespian honors in the fourth annual National Shakespeare Competition sponsored by the English-Speaking Union of the United States.

If all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, these students burned with a desire to play many parts. They writhed on the floor. They beseeched the heavens. They wiped away tears, swore vengeance and trembled in exquisite agony.

The winner of the Los Angeles-area competition, 18-year-old Armando Daniel of San Pedro High School, won a trip to New York City for the national finals, which coincide with Shakespeare’s 428th birthday next month.

He won with performances including a scene from “All’s Well That Ends Well,” in which the braggart Paroles tells a reluctant maiden: “Virginity is peevish, proud, idle, and made of self love. . . . ‘Tis a commodity, Will lose the gloss with lying, The longer kept, the less worth. Off with it, While it is still vendable,” Daniel urged, before a packed Caltech auditorium.

Each of seven finalists performed a dramatic monologue, a sonnet and a random passage that was thrust into their hands 30 minutes before going onstage. Judges said the competition was very close, but measure for measure, they were impressed by Daniel’s cool command of the 16th-Century prose and his willingness to take interpretive risks.

“We thought he made some pretty bold choices; he had a clear idea of how he thought the pieces should go,” said Louis Fantasia, education director for the Shakespeare Globe Center in San Diego.

In particular, the judges admired the moment when Daniel, likening virginity to a pear ripening on the vine, reached out and plucked the imaginary fruit, taking a hearty bite.

The English-Speaking Union also provides schools with academic programs to encourage students to develop literary and dramatic talents. Begun in 1988, its annual competition now draws 6,000 participants nationally.

Some were newcomers to performing; others, like William Barker, 17, are greasepaint veterans. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” demanded Barker, playing a fiery Shylock from “Merchant of Venice.” The teen-ager attends the Van Nuys High School magnet program and has appeared on TV sitcoms such as “Growing Pains.”

For Daniel’s drama teacher, Sheila Ryle, the evening was a replay of last year’s triumph, when her student Micayla Birondo won the California competition. Her strategy? “I tell everybody, keep it simple and honest. It has to be real,” Ryle said.

Her star pupil agreed. “Shouting throughout the whole performance just for shouting’s sake isn’t the way to do it,” Daniel mused.

Judges also picked two runners-up, Stephanie Burden of Estancia High School in Costa Mesa and Jennifer Ricchiazzi of Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Canada Flintridge. Several judges also praised the Lady Macbeth monologue by Rebecca Gruet of Royal High School in Simi Valley.

All three young women took stark, almost plaintive approaches to their characters. Ricchiazzi, who chose Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” knelt on the boards and looked above the heads of her audience, saying to her vixen friend: “Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid! Have you conspired, have you with these contrived to bait me with this derision?”

Ricchiazzi, who plans a career in the theater, will attend Cal State Northridge in the fall.