Sonnet 78

Invoking the youth as his muse, the speaker finds, has helped his poetry by providing direct inspiration, and this perhaps also refers to the help provided through patronage. The speaker notes that other poets have appropriated his way of invoking the young man, and this has helped them distribute their poetry, perhaps by being published, or by otherwise finding readers. The poet's strategy in this sonnet is to portray himself as ignorant and lacking in talent, but the second quatrain in lines 5 and 6 introduces sarcastic mock humility, by the ridiculousness of the image of croaking ("taught the dumb on high to sing"), paired with the image of heavy objects flying about ("heavy ignorance aloft to fly"). This is followed by the hyperbole of young men adding double majesty to grace. The poet encourages the youth to appreciate his work more, because the youth has wholly inspired the poet's works, and this primacy of his invocation has elevated him to the level of the most learned.[2][3]

Sonnet 78 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a metre based on five feet in each line, and two syllables in each foot, accented weak/strong. Most of the lines are regular iambic pentameter, including the 5th line:

  ×    /      ×    /     ×    /   ×   /   ×   / 
Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing (78.5)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

According to Helen Vendler, "Shakespeare excels in a form of verbal emphasis pointing up the conceptual oppositions of his verse." In this first poem of the Rival Poet sequence, "a firm antithesis is drawn between the putatively rude speaker and the other poets clustered round the young man." They are all "learned" and practicing both art and style, while "the poor speaker's ignorance is twice insisted on, as is his muteness (he was dumb) before he saw the young man."[4]

The poem gives us directions as to how we should read it and which words we should emphasize: "The words of the couplet tie — art, high, learning [learnèd], ignorance — repeat in little the topics that are under dispute."[4]

Michael Schoenfeldt notes, "the more whimsical complimentary sonnets, such as 78… such sonnets may be fanciful, but they are not frivolous… Read from the right angle, so to speak, they can be very beautiful, or at least delightful; and in them, as elsewhere Shakespeare is inventing some game or other and playing it out to its conclusion in deft and surprising ways.[5]

The words "pen", "feather", and "style" — used in stanza 1, 2, and 3 respectively — seem to be related. The word "pen" derives from the Latin word penna meaning feather, and in the Renaissance referred to a quill pen, and also was occasionally used to indicate a "feather". The word "style" in line 11 means a writer's literary style, though it also could be used as a synonym for "pen"; it derives from the Latin stilus meaning a writing instrument.[6]

"Dumb", "ignorance", "learned‘s", and "grace" are nouns that occur in the second stanza. The words "dumb" and "ignorance" could indicate the poet. "Learned" and "grace" could indicate a particular rival.[6]

In line 7, the poet uses a "metaphor from falconry and refers to the practice of imping, engrafting extra feathers in the wing of a bird"[6] in order to improve the health and flight of the bird. There are Italian allusions in Sonnet 78. For example, the phrase "penna d'ingegno" in Petrarch's sonnet 307, which means “pen of genius”, is analogous to Shakespeare's phrase “learned's wing”. The reference to falconry is often noted, but not the reference to Petrarch's sonnet.[7]

In line 12's "graces" and "graced", Shakespeare uses a stylistic figure known as polyptoton – the use of words that share the same root. The figure here occurs as a demonstration of what is stated in line 8.[6]

In line 13's phrase "thou art all my art" Shakespeare uses a rhetorical device known as antanaclasis, in which a word is used twice in different senses. The effect of the antanaclasis works as a metaphor for the basic meaning of the clause: "the beloved's being and the speaker's art are one and the same thing".[6] Joel Fineman suggests an alternative interpretation: "Instead of 'thou art all my art', writing itself stands — not subtly, but explictiy —between the poet's first and second persons. Writing itself (the same writing written by "I" the poet and by the "thou" of the young man) gives the poet an ontological and poetic art of interference whose transference both is and is not what it is supposed to be"[8]

Sonnet 78 we find out about a rival who's male and a poet and whose entry initiates an episode of jealousy that comes to a close in only Sonnet 86.[9] The rivalry between the poets may appear to be literary, but, according to the critic Joseph Pequigney, it is in reality a sexual rivalry. This is disturbing because the subject in the sonnet is one that the persona has found erotically profitable, in part because the other poet may be superior in learning and style. Shakespeare is not concerned with poetic triumph he is vying only for the prize of a fair friend. The combat between the two rivals is indirect and the speaker never addresses his literary adversary and only mentions his beloved. It is the body language of Sonnet 78 (the first in the series) 79, 80 and 84 that serves to convert the topic of letters into that of eroticism. Shakespeare is known for his usage of puns and double meaning on words. So it isn't surprising that he uses wordplay in the first quatrain on "pen" for the male appendage, or, as a Stein-cum-Joyce might say, "a pen is a penis a pen," is fully utilized. The poet remarks at 78.4, "every alien pen hath got my use," where "alien" = 'of a stranger' and "use," besides 'literary practice,' can = 'carnal enjoyment.'[9] These sexual allusions are made in passing; they are overtones, restricted to a line or two.

"Shakespeare's sonnets 78-86 concern the Speaker's rivalry with other poets and especially with one 'better spirit' who is 'learned' and 'polished'".[11] In Sonnet 78 we find out about a rival who is male and a poet and whose entry initiates an episode of jealousy that comes to a close in only Sonnet 86[9] These sonnets are considered to be the Rival Poet sonnets. The rival poet sonnets include three primary figures; the fair youth, the rival poet, and the lady who is desired by both men.

It is not known for certain whether he rival poet of sonnets 78 to 86 is fictional or is based on an actual person. Some suggest he may be George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Barnabe Barnes, Gervase Markham, or Richard Barnfield.[12][13]