That’s exactly how I’ve always heard Mark Antony’s speech performed in the Tragedy of Julius Caesar. And everyone always acts like it was great oratory.
This and several later comments raise the question- how do speakers whose words actually are remembered later, but are perhaps less captivating at the time, differ stylistically and structurally from that 5-step pattern?
Does it make sense to say a lot of these big characters- the Hitlers, Castros, Churchills, Santorums and Ceasars of the speech-giving world- seem to trade a little dignity for added hype and a little content for added style?
Yeah, well, when you’ve got Hugo Boss making your suits, it ain’t hard to look spiffy.
Add in new-fangled loudspeakers and an unfamiliarity with public performance where the crowds numbered in the thousands.[1] Rock stars have played to arenas for decades, but back in the 1930s it was quite new.
[1] Admittedly Rome had its coliseum. But I am unaware of a lot of speech making in such contexts: I assume that after a certain crowd size amplification becomes a necessity. But maybe I am misguided.
Not as much as you’d think, old theaters (including open-air ones) often have real good acoustics. Take this with a grain of salt, but a friend who was in a band and used to handle their sound mentioned that setting up a bullring for a concert is a bitch because the musicians are in the wrong spot, to the side rather than on the center of the arena.
It’s partly a function of size, yes, but more so of shape.