SOURCE: Snyder, Susan. “‘The Norwegians Are Coming!’: Shakespearean Misleadings.” In Elizabethan Theater, edited by R. B. Parker and S. P. Zitner, pp. 200-13. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Snyder remarks on a similar absence of a crucial battle scene in both Othello and Hamlet, noting that Shakespeare did not dramatize the Turkish attack against Cyprus in Othello and represented Fortinbras's invasion of Denmark in Hamlet as a relatively bloodless one. Both tragedies, the critic suggests, depict the enemy within as a greater threat than the foreign antagonist.

To explore what seems to me a characteristic Shakespearean strategy, I want to consider two battles that don't happen: the Turkish attack against Cyprus in Othello and the invasion of Danish lands by Fortinbras and his Norwegian force in Hamlet. Both of these loom large in the early action of their respective plays. The upcoming wars are...