expression. While all the other muses produce impres-
sive-looking “comments”; he produces a sonnet.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Marjory E. Lange
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 86 (“Was it the
proud full sail of his great verse”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 86, like several of the
SONNETs immediately before and after it, presents ele-
ments of a poetic rivalry between the speaker and
another, anonymous poet—neither of them ever fully
identifi ed—for the favor of the equally anonymous
youth. In this SONNET, the speaker proposes three ques-
tions to explore why he has been unable to speak or
write when the rival poet is around. These questions
and the speaker’s rejection of each explanation occupy
the fi rst 12 lines. He concludes in the COUPLET that the
youth’s infi delity has rendered him speechless.
In the fi rst QUATRAIN, the speaker asks if it was the
power of the rival’s poetry (l. 1) that killed his own
ability to write, leaving the speaker’s ripe thoughts
“inhearse[d]” (l. 3)—that is, placed on a hearse, buried
in the speaker’s brain. The image is of stillbirth (“their
tomb the womb wherein they grew,” l. 4). The tone of
this quatrain is ambivalent: The speaker could be prais-
ing the rival’s poetry in terms of a great galleon, or even
of a fl eet, but he could equally be describing it in terms
that make it appear pretentious and grandiloquent.
Either way, “bound for” (l. 2) is a nautical term refer-
ring to a ship approaching another with the clear intent
of capture. Coupled with the images of stillbirth, this is
a violent quatrain.
The second quatrain suggests that the rival poet gets
a great deal of his inspiration from “spirits” or “ghosts”
(ll. 5, 7, 9). It is important to note these choices in dic-
tion: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE does not use muse, the more
conventional term for inspiring spirits, but spirit, which
is altogether ambiguous. In the middle of this quatrain,
Shakespeare begins to answer the questions he has
asked: No, neither the poet himself nor any extrater-
restrial help he gets has silenced the speaker. This
insistence continues into the third quatrain, where the
speaker reiterates his insistence that neither the poet
nor the ghost can claim to have silenced him: They “as
victors of my silence cannot boast; / I was not sick of
any fear from thence” (ll. 11–12).
Only the couplet, where the VOLTA occurs, resolves
the issue: When the youth deserted the speaker in
favor of the rival, the speaker no longer had any sub-
ject to write about. The youth’s presence in the rival’s
verse, “when your countenance fi ll’d up his line” (l.
13), demonstrates that, as far as the speaker is con-
cerned, he has been deserted, and as a result, he lacked
“matter” (l. 14), or a subject. The pun on “fi lling the
lines” is subtle but pointed, particularly if the fi rst qua-
train is read ironically: The rival poet needed the
youth’s physical qualities to make his lines scan even,
while the speaker crafted his lines to enhance the
youth’s beauties with their praise.
During the fi rst 12 lines, the speaker’s attention
remains on the rival and the possibility that he has
affected the speaker’s writing. The speaker inserts him-
self into the discussion only when he rejects each
explanation, reminding us that, in fact, he himself is
the sonnet’s subject. Inverting the syntax in lines 10
and 11 returns the rival (and the ghost) to prominence,
putting the focus back on the rival so that the couplet,
clarifying the beloved youth’s responsibility, assumes
even greater force. The strategy is designed to put the
youth—and the reader—off guard so that when the
responsibility for the poet’s inability to write is fi nally
assigned, we are all surprised.
Among Shakespeare’s sonnets, this one is syntacti-
cally unusual because it is written entirely in past
tense. Even at the end, no reason is given for the fact
that apparently the rival no longer fi gures in the poet’s
landscape. In addition, Sonnet 86 features a 12-2 pat-
tern of development, where the couplet bears the BUR-
DEN of the turn. However, the substantial shift of focus
in line 7 gives the sonnet an inverted Italian logic. For
six lines, the focus remains on the rival poet, who is
proposed as the reason for the speaker’s enforced
silence. At that point, the speaker reappears and, for
another six lines, rejects the charges. A second inver-
sion in lines 11 and 12, this time syntactic, places the
speaker squarely against both the youth (for his dis-
loyalty) and the rival poet in the couplet. Sonnet 86
raises more questions than it answers—chief among
them, what happened to the rival poet?—and the son-378 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 86