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.