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Sunday, September 28, 2025

The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 86.


86


WAS it the proud full saile of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of (all to precious) you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my braine inhearce,

Making their tombe the wombe wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

Above a mortall pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compiers by night

Giving him ayde, 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 feare from thence.

But when your countinance fild up his line,

Then lackt I matter, that infeebled mine.



3. inhearce] Schmidt (1874): Enclose as in a coffin. enhearse, inhearce, inhearse] OED. To put into a hearse.

4. (all to precious)] all too precious

13. countenance] approval. Double entendre likely upon “face / likeness”.

13. fild] filled


Commentary in Alden:


1.] —Furnivall: [This line] probably alludes to the swelling hexameters of Chapman's Englishing of Homer.

4.] —Malone: Cf. R. & J., II, iii, 9-10:

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;

What is her burying grave, that is her womb.

—Rolfe: We find the same thought in Lucretius, v. 259: "Omniparens eadem rerum commune sepulchrum."

—Walsh: Cf. ["To Time," by "A. W.," in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody:] "Thy womb, that all doth breed, is tomb to all."

—Verity: Cf. Spenser, Ruins of Time:

The seeds of which all things at first were bred

Shall in great Chaos' womb again be hid.

5. spirit . . . spirits.] —Massey [finds here the chief evidence of Marlowe as rival poet:] Sh. speaks of Marlowe and identifies him with the "familiar" spirit, Mephistopheles, just as Thorpe does when he dedicates the translation of Lucan's first book to Edward Blunt, and alludes to Marlowe as a "familiar spirit." [Marlowe was generally believed to practice necromancy as a student of black magic.

9-10.] —Steevens: Alluding perhaps to the celebrated Dr. Dee's pretended intercourse with an angel, and other familiar spirits. Massey: Who does not recognize Faustus, his necromancy, and his boasts of what he will have the spirits do for him? Who does not see that Sh., thinking dramatically, has identified Marlowe with Faustus and thrown him on the stage, where, in vision — if it be not an actual fact that the play was running at the Curtain Theatre while Sh. was composing that sonnet — he sees his familiar Mephistopheles "gulling him nightly" with such intelligence as that "in Hell are all manner of delights." [Cf. especially the line in Dr. Faustus, "They say thou hast a familiar spirit," etc.] (Qu. Rev., 115: 447.) Henry Brown, [taking Davies as rival poet, thinks Drayton may have been the] intelligencer alluded to, as aiding Davies, like an evil spirit, with dark suggestions, (p. 193.)

G. Stronach, [(N. & Q., 9th s., 12: 141) taking the sonnet series to be a miscellany like the Pass. Pilgrim, believes that this sonnet was written about Sh. by Barnes.]


Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say?

Commentary in Rollins:


1. proud full saile] —Beeching (ed. 1904): So in Sonnet 80.6: “proudest sail.”—Brooke (ed. 1936):4 The proud full-sail,’ verse like a ship with all canvas spread.—In the line Lee (ed. 1907) denies a reference to Chapman: Chapman’s poetic style, though very involved, cannot be credited with exceptional dignity. Shakespeare’s words will not bear too literal an interpretation.— Pooler (ed. 1918): This, if not ironical, could apply only to Marlowe’s verse or Chapman’s, and Marlowe died in 1593; would good verse be inspired by the gulling of an affable ghost?—Tucker (ed. 1924): The epithets all belong to the picture of a great galleon with full-spread sails setting forth to win rich ‘prizes’ on the Spanish main (as did Raleigh in 1597). Meanwhile the poet hints that the rival is seeking, not (as he himself does) the love of the patron, but a rich material return.

9. affable familiar ghost] —Gissing, 1883 (Letters, 1927 ed., p. 132), calls this a “marvellous phrase.”—In lines 9 f. Steevens (ed. 1780) sees an allusion “to the celebrated Dr. Dee’s pretended intercourse with an angel, and other familiar spirits.”

13. fild up] —Tucker (ed. 1924): Shakespeare was not afraid of the verse of his rival in itself, but only when the patron lent it his countenance. This ‘fill’d up’ anything that might be lacking in it.



General Commentary:


—Tyler: To Professor Minto (Characteristics of English Poets, 2nd edit., p, 221 seq.) is due the identification of the rival poet of the Sonnets with George Chapman, an identification so complete as to leave no reasonable doubt on the matter.

5. by spirits taught, etc.] —Tucker: This cannot mean ‘taught by other men of genius’ (the ‘compeers’ of 1. 7), since ‘other’ would be indispensable; nor would these teach him to write ‘above a mortal pitch.’ The ‘spirits’ are the disembodied geniuses of the past, from whom the rival, as a man of learning, derived inspiration and matter. It is true that, when alive, such geniuses were ‘mortal,’ but as now spirits, they are something more, and their influence may be supposed to be of a higher nature.

—Sams, Eric: Only an implacable pre-conviction could torture those words into confessing any connection with “Marlowe” or “Chapman”. Marlowe was dead to begin with, in 1593; and there is no record that Chapman's innocuous claim to have conversed with the spirit of Homer was made before 1609. Besides, their two candidatures cancel each other out. Above all, neither of them can be shown to have sought Southampton's favour at a time when he was Shakespeare's well-known patron.

...neither of them can be shown to have sought Southampton's favour at a time when he was Shakespeare's well-known patron.

    But Barnaby Barnes did, with a sonnet which has a line filled with Southampton’s countenance, and in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was published. Barnes, furthermore, was a notorious occultist. His intimate friend Wllliam Percy asks him, by name, in his own Sonnets to Coelia (1594): “What tell'st thou me, by spells thou hast won thy dear?”

10. gulls him.] —Tucker: It is difficult to believe that this means ‘deludes,’ since the rival writes ‘above a mortal pitch,’ etc. More probably, a ‘gull’ being a young unfledged bird, to ‘gull’ is to treat as such, i.e. to feed him with what he cannot obtain for himself. The food is ‘intelligence,’ or what we should call ‘ideas.’


Editor's Commentary:


—Purdy: 5. spirits... spirits] (“Closing the Deal”) “refers to Edmund Spenser's call to the ghost of Sir Philip Sidney, in the poem Ruine of Time (1596), to inspire (breathe into) him:

O noble spirite! live there ever blessed,

*

Thereto doo thou my humble spirite raise,

And into me that sacred breath inspire,

Which thou there breathest perfect and entire.”

—Purdy: 9-10. affable...gulls] (“Closing the Deal”) Sir Walter 'Raleigh (then a particularly affable intimate of that circle) “gulling” him after their return to their lodgings each night.'



Sources Cited:


Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare from the Quarto of 1609 with variorum readings and commentary (1916).

Malone, Edmund. Plays and Poems of W. Sh., with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators... etc. (1821). [James Boswell.] 

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “How Shakespeare's Rival Poet Sonnets Prove Edmund Spenser the Rival.” Virtual Grub Street,  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2025/08/how-shakespeares-rival-poet-sonnets.html

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Closing the Deal: Edmund Spenser was the Rival Poet.” Virtual Grub Street, https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2025/08/closing-deal-edmund-spenser-was-rival.html

Rollins, Hyder. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. The Sonnets. Volume 1. (1944).

Sams, Eric. “Who was the Rival Poet of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 86?” Accessed September 28, 2025. https://ericsams.org/index.php/on-shakespeare/essays-and-reviews/166-who-was-the-rival-poet-of-shakespeare-s-sonnet-86

Tyler, Thomas. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1890). 33.

Tucker, T.G. The Sonnets of Shakespeare Edited from the Quarto of 1609 (1924).



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