<p>"In order for the audience to believe in and be engaged by a Shakespearean character, they have to come across as a real person on the stage." </p>
<p>How is "to believe in" and "be engaged by" parallel? Doesn't parallelism require the preposition to be the same meaning "to be engaged by"?</p>
<p>The “to” is implied.</p>
<p>Take an extreme case. Is this correct?</p>
<p>“The twins loved to fight, to bike, to scare the cat and to climb hills.”</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you rather say:</p>
<p>“The twins loved to fight, bike, scare the cat, and climb hills.” Repeating the preposition “to” is at best awkward.</p>
<p>Prepositions either need to be with JUST the first item in a list:</p>
<p>“I want to shop, bike, and swim on vacation.”</p>
<p>Or with all items in the list:</p>
<p>“I want to shop, to bike, and to swim on vacation.”</p>
<p>It’s wrong with only two of the items where there are more than two in the list:
WRONG: “I want to shop, to bike, and swim on vacation.”</p>
<p>Since your example is just two prepositional phrases connected, either way is correct.</p>
<p>The parallelism can be seen with</p>
<p>“to believe” and “to be engaged”</p>
<p>the sentence eliminated the “to” from “to be engaged”. “believe” and “be engaged” are parallel as they’re both used from the perspective of the “audience”.</p>
<p>Repeating prepositions selectively can improve the rhythm of some sentences.</p>