Sonnet 86 argues that the rival poet did not silence the speaker by superior genius or supernatural help: the speaker fell silent because the young man’s favor filled the rival’s verse and left his own with nothing to say.
Sonnet 86: Full Poem
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 86 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 86 Means
The poem opens with a question. Was it “the proud full sail of his great verse,” the rival’s poetry pictured as a great ship under full canvas, sailing for “the prize of all-too-precious you,” that killed the speaker’s “ripe thoughts” before they could be written? Those thoughts were ready to be born, but something made “their tomb the womb wherein they grew.” To “inhearse” was to place in a coffin, and the speaker’s brain has become a burial place for his poems.
A second question follows. Was it the rival’s “spirit, by spirits taught to write / Above a mortal pitch,” inspired by supernatural beings to write at a height no human could reach, that “struck me dead”? In line 7, the speaker answers both questions at once: “No.” Neither the rival nor “his compeers by night,” the companions who help him in the dark, “astonished” the speaker’s verse, that is, stunned it into silence.
The third quatrain extends the denial with a sneer. Neither the rival nor “that affable familiar ghost / Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,” a friendly attendant spirit that feeds him information every night and, the word “gulls” suggests, fools him with it, can boast of being “victors of my silence.” The speaker insists, “I was not sick of any fear from thence.”
The couplet gives the real reason. “But when your countenance filled up his line, / Then lacked I matter.” When the young man’s face, and his favor, filled the rival’s verse, the speaker had nothing left to write about. “That enfeebled mine”: it was the loss of his subject, not the strength of his rival, that weakened his poetry.
Sonnet 86 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 86 is the last of the Rival Poet group, and it moves the cause of the speaker’s silence from the rival to the young man. Its themes follow that shift.
Silence and Its Causes
The speaker’s silence has been a subject for several poems. In Sonnet 83, the young man blames him for it, and in Sonnet 85, the speaker defends it as a form of love, with a “tongue-tied Muse” who keeps quiet out of good manners. Sonnet 86 gives a third account, and it is the least comfortable. The silence is not modesty and not defeat. It is what happens to a poet whose subject has turned away.
Inspiration, Natural and Supernatural
The rival’s inspiration comes from “spirits,” “compeers by night,” and a “familiar ghost.” The speaker’s inspiration, as the sequence presents it, comes from the young man himself. In Sonnet 78, the young man’s eyes are said to have “taught the dumb on high to sing,” and the speaker calls him “all my art.” Sonnet 86 sets these two sources side by side. The rival may have ghosts, but the speaker had the young man, and once that source fails, no spirit can replace it.
Favor and Patronage
The poem’s language of prizes and countenance places the rivalry in a world of favor. The young man is “the prize,” something to be won, and his “countenance” is both his face and his support. The speaker does not lose a contest of skill. He loses a contest for attention, and the poem suggests that in such a contest the better poet does not necessarily win.
Form and Language
Sonnet 86 builds a grand image of the rival, undercuts it with mockery, and then collapses into a plain statement of loss.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem follows the usual Shakespearean pattern of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter. Two rhymes depend on older pronunciation or on stress. “Dead” in line 6 rhymes with “astonished” in line 8, which requires the final “-ed” to be sounded as a separate syllable, “astonish-ed.” “Intelligence” in line 10 rhymes with “thence” in line 12 on its final syllable. The octave is built from two questions and a denial, and the sestet from a further denial and a confession.
The Ship and the Prize
The opening image returns to a metaphor from Sonnet 80, where the young man’s worth is an ocean that bears “the humble as the proudest sail,” and the speaker’s “saucy bark,” a small boat, sails beside the rival’s tall ship. In Sonnet 86, the rival’s “proud full sail” is “Bound for the prize.” A “prize” was a ship or cargo captured at sea, so the image casts the rival as a raider and the young man as his target.
“Tomb” and “Womb”
Line 4 joins birth and death in a single chiming phrase: “Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew.” The speaker’s brain conceived his thoughts and then became their grave. The same pair of words appears in Sonnet 3, which imagines a woman whose “unear’d womb” waits for the young man and warns him against being “the tomb” of his own self-love. There the pairing concerns children; here it concerns poems, but in both cases something that should have been born is buried.
“Countenance”
“Countenance” could mean a face, and it could also mean favor, support, or patronage. Hamlet uses the second sense when he calls Rosencrantz a sponge “that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities.” In line 13, the young man’s countenance fills the rival’s line in both senses: his face is the subject of the rival’s verse, and his favor is what the rival has won.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 86 is a poem of mockery that ends in an accusation, and its mockery of the rival is the cover for its real complaint against the young man.
The opening lines are genuinely grand. “Was it the proud full sail of his great verse” is a line heavy with stresses, and it swells the way the sail does. But the praise is ambivalent from the start. “Proud” can mean splendid, and it can mean arrogant. The phrase “all-too-precious” can be a compliment to the young man or a wry comment on how much effort he seems to require. The speaker grants the rival his grandeur in words that leave room for doubt.
By the third quatrain, the doubt has become satire. A “familiar” was a spirit that attended a magician or a witch, as when Joan la Pucelle in Henry VI, Part 1 calls on her helpers: “Now, ye familiar spirits that are cull’d / Out of the powerful regions under earth.” The rival is pictured as a conjuror who believes his midnight visitor, and the word “gulls” suggests that the visitor is deceiving him. The “intelligence” he receives may be false. The speaker turns the rival’s inspiration into a kind of credulity.
The denials, though, are insistent. “No, neither he, nor his compeers,” “He, nor that affable familiar ghost,” “cannot boast,” “I was not sick of any fear.” A speaker who says this many times that he was not afraid invites the question of why he needs to say it. The couplet supplies the answer. The speaker was silenced, and he knows by whom. “But when your countenance filled up his line, / Then lacked I matter.” The word “matter” carries the weight. It means subject matter, but it also means substance, and the speaker implies that without the young man his verse has neither.
The final couplet pairs “his line” with “mine,” and the pairing tells the story of the whole group in small. The rival’s line is full; the speaker’s is empty, and the young man’s attention is what moved from one to the other. The rival, for all his spirits, is not the enemy after all. The poem ends by placing responsibility with the young man, and the next poem, Sonnet 87, opens with “Farewell!”
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 86, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 86 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets. Sonnets 1 to 126 are generally read as addressed to him, and Sonnet 86 is usually counted as the last poem of the Rival Poet group, Sonnets 78 to 86.
Who Is the Rival Poet in Sonnet 86?
The poem does not say. Readers have proposed several contemporaries of Shakespeare, among them George Chapman and Christopher Marlowe, but no identification has been proved, and some readers doubt that the rival was a single real person.
What Is the “Affable Familiar Ghost”?
A “familiar” was an attendant spirit believed to serve a magician or witch. The speaker imagines the rival receiving nightly help from such a spirit, and the word “gulls” suggests that the spirit is tricking him.
What Silenced the Speaker in Sonnet 86?
Not the rival’s skill or his supernatural helpers, the speaker says. He fell silent because the young man’s “countenance,” his face and his favor, filled the rival’s verse, leaving the speaker without a subject.
Where Is the Volta in Sonnet 86?
The poem turns twice. Line 7 answers the opening questions with “No,” and line 13 gives the real cause with “But when your countenance filled up his line.” The second turn is the decisive one, because it moves the blame from the rival to the young man.
Related Sonnets
Three nearby sonnets share this poem’s rivalry, its silence, and its sense of loss.