Sonnet 86

Sonnet 86 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a part of the Rival Poet subsection of the Fair Youth sonnets in which Shakespeare writes about an unnamed young man and a rival poet competing for the youth's attention. While the exact date of its composition is unknown, scholars generally agree that the Rival Poet series was written between 1598 and 1600 and published along with the rest of the sonnets in the 1609 Quarto. Within the sonnet, the speaker contemplates his inability to articulate his admiration for the Fair Youth, a fault he attributes to his jealousy of the Fair Youth's appearance in the poems of the speaker's Rival Poet. Sonnet 86 is notable within the Rival Poet subsection of sonnets because it allegedly provides important clues as to the historical identity of this Rival Poet. The sonnet is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, containing 14 lines of iambic pentameter and ending in a rhymed couplet.