considers this intimidation is not caused by the artistic skill of his rival. In the opening lines of the sonnet, "[Shakespeare] charmingly suggests an inhibition through jealousy, not of superior poetic powers, but of encountering the Fair Young Man's portrait in a rival's verses." Kenneth Muir writes: "Whether ‘the proud full sail of his great verse’ is sincere admiration [by the speaker of the sonnet] or a hint that [the rival's verse] is bombastic is still debated." In the eighth line ("Giving him aid, my verse astonished") the word "astonished" is used with an earlier definition: "bereft of sensation; stunned, benumbed," in describing the speaker's verse. The final line of the third quatrain ("I was not sick of any fear from thence") sets the stage for the couplet, and alludes to the fact that, while his fear did not come from "thence" (the rival poet), there is a fear that has silenced his writing. The couplet returns to a primary theme of the entire Rival Poet group: that the young man is the only source of inspiration and the only proper subject. The couplet shows two extremes of response that the young man and his desire for flattery causes in his poets: the over-inflated verse of the rival and the silence of the speaker. Sonnet 86 is expressed in the past tense, suggesting the end of the Rival Poets group, and a look back. The speaker indicates that his silence was not caused by the Rival Poet, but at his rival's "appropriation of the young man's favour" (line 13 and 14). Structure The word sonnet ultimately derives from the Latin word for sound (sonus), and from the Old Occitan word for song (sonet). In 1573, George Gascoigne established an important definition of the English Sonnet: I can best allowe to call those Sonnets which are of fourtene lynes, every line conteyning tenne syllables. The first twelve do ryme in staves of foure lines by crosse metre, and the last twoo ryming together do conclude the whole. Sonnet 86 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme, and is composed in iambic pentameter, a metre of five feet per line, with two syllables in each foot accented weak/strong. It follows the English Sonnet form described by Gascoigne. However it follows the earlier Petrarchan model in one way —