Othello - Act I

Question #1 on pg. 1119

This play employs realistic conventions because it is something that we can relate to doing in our society today. In this act, two men, Roderigo and Iago, go to Barbantio's house because they heard that is daughter was married behind his back.  He initially explained thought that "[Othello] hast enchanted her" (I.ii.63) and tricked Desdemona into marrying him, but Desdemona is really in love with Othello.  I can definitely see this happening in society now as having a daughter go behind her father's back and get hitched could very easily happen today.  On the spectrum, I believe that this play falls on the side of literalistic imitation of reality.  Nothing extraordinary like magic or miracles have occurred so far.  To be honest, I don't know what the "norm" is in a play so I don't know if there were breaks from it.  So far, I can tell that the play has been very dramatic with characters' emotions constantly changing.  One thing I did notice that Iago changes the way he speaks when he's around different people.  He speaks in prose when with Roderigo, but he talks in poetry to other people in order to impress them.  I think most of this act was focused on introducing the plot and characters more than anything else.