Sonnet 86 is the last of the Rival Poet group of sonnets, and it gives a final reason why William Shakespeare has, as he himself put it in Sonnet 85, become tongue-tied and been unable to express himself adequately in his praise of the young lover.

Together with Sonnet 80 it bookends the group-within-a-group consisting of Sonnets 82 to 85 which together make an elaborate argument in Shakespeare's defence and connecting, as it does, with the theme of seafaring and relaunching the metaphor of a sailing vessel, Sonnet 86 draws a direct link not only to the imagery of Sonnet 80, but also its tonality, which is decidedly distinct from that of the sonnets so bracketed. Both, this much more suggestive tone and the thematic reference to Sonnet 80, as well as the on its own somewhat perplexing conclusion Sonnet 85 had come to, will help us greatly in our understanding of this heavily laden and layered poem.

With Sonnet 85, William Shakespeare concludes the group-within-a-group of four sonnets that concern themselves with his own defence against the charge – evidently levied by his young lover – that his poetry is lacking in lavish expressions of praise and that 'imputes', as Shakespeare himself calls it in Sonnet 83, his silence, or, as it should more accurately be described, comparative silence, as a sin.

Here, Shakespeare rounds off his main argument, giving as the reason for this 'silence' simply decorum – good manners – and suggesting that while he can agree with all the praise heaped on the young man by other poets – for which here again we can assume he means principally one other poet – discretion demands that he remain silent and allow for his actions to express his genuine love for him better than words.

With Sonnet 84, William Shakespeare continues and underpins his defence of himself against the charge, referenced explicitly in Sonnet 83, that he has failed to present his young lover with sufficiently effusive praise and instead remained silent about his unparalleled qualities: not only is it the case – as he told the young man there – that you do not need 'painting' in elaborate words since these words, no matter how they try, can never actually do you justice, but in fact the greatest compliment anyone can pay you, this sonnet now postulates, is that you are exactly as you are: what a poet really needs to do is bring out the essence in you, and if he succeeds in this, then and only then can he truly lay a claim to fame as a writer.

And more true to his word than perhaps his argument sets out to be, Shakespeare closes this sonnet with his strongest rebuke of the young man since Sonnet 69, but unlike there, he doesn't follow this with a hasty absolution, but with one more poem to drive home his point...