PROVIDENCE — Some things never go out of style, even after 400 years. The newest video game or the latest big-budget blockbuster may capture teens’ attention for a fleeting moment, but the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare still have cachet with high schoolers — both for his universal themes and his great lyrical skill.

Oh, and you sound smart when you quote him.

“It’s hard not to throw it into everything you say,” said Ian McCahill, a Moses Brown School junior. “And then people are like, ‘Was that Shakespeare?’ ”

He and 13 other Rhode Island high school students spent hours yesterday quoting Shakespeare at length before a panel of judges and an audience of parents and friends, as part of the Shakespeare Acting and Recitation competition held at Laurelmead, a Providence senior community.

They were the victors in competitions at the 14 participating schools.

Yesterday’s winner, Ari Brisbon, a senior at Hope High School, will face 60 other students at the national competition in New York in April. The winner there will be awarded a four-week acting course this summer at the British American Drama Academy, in London.

The competition draws from English classes and drama departments statewide. Some students are there because they have found a love for Shakespeare’s famous words. Others like him because he creates visceral characters. Brisbon, who came from the drama side, chose a monologue spoken by the villain, Aaron, of Shakespeare’s Roman history Titus Andronicus.

Brisbon’s eyes lit as he strode the stage and used Shakespeare’s words to list Aaron’s many misdeeds: his roles in rape, murder and even the cutting off of General Titus’ hand.

“As, kill a man, else devise his death; ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,” Brisbon said, as Aaron lists his crimes in one of the play’s climactic scenes.

Afterward, a far less sinister Brisbon said that he tried to deeply inhabit the role of a “psychotic and a sadist” — tapping into the baser parts of himself that he said Shakespeare knew were in all of us.

“Anybody is capable of anything. Are you willing to go on stage and not just perform, but show the truth?”

That is why Shakespeare remains relevant to today’s youth, he said. The Bard dealt with timeless issues, and was never afraid to mine human failings to create deeper, more realistic characters.

“Shakespeare is showing everything that people hide. I know a lot of people who are gay, and a lot of people don’t like that. In Romeo and Juliet, there’s a lot of family fighting …”

Brisbon, 18, hopes to study theater at the Boston University School of the Arts in the fall, professing his love for the stage in a way that would make Shakespeare’s Aaron proud.

“I’m infatuated with theater. If it was a woman, I would kill anyone to get to her,” he said.

The competition, which has been held nationally since 1983 and in Rhode Island since the early 1990s, is sponsored by the English-Speaking Union of the United States.

There are a few rules. Costumes are not allowed, and the monologue must be a maximum of 20 lines long. Students can be prompted if they forget a line, as some did yesterday, but most were able to push through, with a smile and a brief turn of their eyes towards the ceiling as the only evidence they’d broken character and forgotten a line.

Many of the students participate in the program as part of a class, and receive class credit. Others, such as Mary Villa, of Mount Pleasant High School, do it simply because they love Shakespeare.

Villa, 17, said that as she prepared to come to the statewide competition, her teachers had her recite her monologue and sonnet in front of her peers.

“I was paraded through a couple of classes, just to see what it was like to be in front of all those people. It was nerve-racking and exhilarating all at the same time.”

She said she may have even made a few converts.

dbarbari@projo.com