"You know that story of the great statesman who was heard by his own gardener saying, as he paced the garden, "Had I, Mr. Speaker, received the smallest intimation that I could be called upon to speak this evening..."
— The Conjuror, Magic by G. K. Chesterton
Whenever someone publicly claims not to be able to give a speech, or talks about how ineloquent or rough-spoken they are, they're lying. Run for the hills, or resign yourself to giving them anything they want.
This Stock Phrase can be traced as far back as Plato, who put it in the mouth of Socrates at his trial.note
This is the standard tactic of the Simple Country Lawyer, and often leads naturally into a Rousing Speech. Mirror Monologue or other technique can be used to show them practicing beforehand — often with the line about not being able to give a speech.
Sometimes the character is overheard rehearsing, including, of course, this line.
See also Large Ham Radio, where people seem remarkably at home giving a radio broadcast, and Throwing Out the Script, which can lend a similar air of authenticity but tends to be more sincere. Someone who genuinely lacks confidence speaking may be advised to Imagine the Audience Naked, which doesn't usually work. Compare You Said You Couldn't Dance for a similar display of skill by someone who claims to have none.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In episode 2 of Steins;Gate, Kurisu Makise starts her lecture on the implausibility of time travel by claiming to have little experience giving lectures and asking the participants bear with her. Rintaro, having introduced himself to her earlier as "Kyouma Hououin", immediately jumps from his seat arguing for the possibility of time travel. Cut forward to Rintaro having been thoroughly humiliated by her knowledge on theoretical physics that she so eloquently used to debunk his every claim, punctuated with a patronizingly drawn-out "Hououin-san".
Comic Books
- The Sandman (1989): Destiny of the Endless makes this claim (Desire, who is present, mimics him and mockingly adds "or speaking at all"). Other characters gradually realize that Destiny still isn't really speaking publicly; he's reading publicly. It comes in handy to have a book containing everything that is, was, and will be.
Fan Works
- In A Man of Iron, Greatjon Umber describes himself as far from scholarly, then reminds the Northern lords of their history.
Films — Animated
- In The Last Unicorn, one of the songs is sung by Prince Lir, wherein he professes his love simply for Amalthea. In the first stanza he says he can't write, which makes sense, but in the next he says that he can't write poetry or music either - while singing a solo in a song that rhymes.
Films — Live-Action
- In Batman (1989), when DA Harvey Dent makes his first public appearance he begins his fairly decent speech with, "I am a man of few words, but I will make those words count...".
- The schoolteacher in Blazing Saddles starts off reading a telegram she wrote to the governor in a small, meek voice, when the crowd tells her to speak up. She apologizes, citing this trope, then gets incredibly loud all of a sudden.
- Django Unchained: Dr Schultz speaks with impeccable grammar and elevated diction. Whenever a yokel can't follow his erudite language, he apologizes and says that English is not his first language.
- Played for laughs (like everything else) in Dr. Strangelove.
Major "King" Kong: Well, boys, I reckon this is it — nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human bein's if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin' on you and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for ever' last one of you regardless of your race, color or your creed. Now let's get this thing on the hump - we got some flyin' to do.
- Inglourious Basterds: In the opening scene, Hans Landa claims, in eloquent French, that his French is bad (even saying that he's "exhausted" his "limited" abilities) and asks Monsieur LaPadite if they can switch their conversation to English. Of course, his real reason for switching had nothing to do with his proficiency.
- Subverted in Madadayo. At the first Not Yet Fest, one student gets up to speak. He says that he's not good at giving public speeches—so he will recite every single station on a particular commuter railway line. And he does, reciting every last station on the line, continuing long after everyone has stopped listening, continuing while other students give their tribute speeches, continuing while the party morphs into a drunken conga line, and still continuing until the party is over and all the other guests have gone.
- The educational short Self Conscious Guy (featured on RiffTrax), the lead stammers out the Trope verbatim while under a spotlight, saying he'll just "sit down and shut up".
- In a punning reference to this phrase, the first film that Laurel and Hardy made after the advent of sound films was called Unaccustomed as We Are.
Literature
- The Trope Namer is Plato in his Apology of Socrates, where he has Socrates use this to preface his speech defending himself before the Athenian court. Socrates begins by saying that just as they would forgive a foreigner for speaking before them with an accent, he is so "foreign" to public speaking that they should forgive him if his rhetoric isn't very flowery. As you'd expect, an epic and eloquent rhetorical smackdown is about to ensue. He loses anyway.
- Cicero also has a habit of doing this, or in some cases he will play down his education altogether, as in Pro Archia.
- In The Bible, when the Lord tells Moses to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, Moses asks how he is to do this when he cannot speak well. This is often taken to mean that Moses had a speech impediment. God tells Moses that his brother Aaron will do the public speaking for him.
- Referenced in Fiddler on the Roof,
Tevye: As Abraham said, "I am a stranger in a strange land... "Mendel: Moses said that.Tevye: Ah. Well, as King David said, "I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue."Mendel: That was also Moses.Tevye: For a man who was slow of tongue, he talked a lot. - Also in The Bible (New Testament) - Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 "I may indeed be untrained as a speaker...". Paul was highly educated. He was probably somewhat playing this trope, somewhat slyly comparing himself to others whom he considered to be lying windbags/false teachers.
- The novel version
of The Force Unleashed multimedia project subverts this. When the apprentice joins a meeting of a group of Rebel Leaders, the narration notes that public speaking is as familiar to him as the Whirling Kavadango Dance. That is, he's heard of it and probably could identify it, but that's it. And so he doesn't say anything.
- In Guy Gavriel Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry Matt has to debate another dwarf and mentions that he isn't much of one for speeches, and this is true in comparison with his opponent. However dwarves see words and debate as extremely important, so his speech is still very good. And both of them manage to infuriate the judge, Matt by bringing in a prop for effect, the other by speaking a second time to refute Matt's claims.
- Davos Seaworth of A Song of Ice and Fire uses this trope almost every time he speaks. So far he's proven to be one of the series most influential politicians and diplomats.
- In The Stand, Stu invokes this when he's moderating the big Free Zone meeting in the auditorium. He doesn't say the line, but he talks about how nervous he is and asks them to bear with him and they'll get through it. He's more sincere than most, as his internal monologue reveals that he is quite nervous, he has no background in public speaking or post-high-school education, and moments later he gets a terrible burst of feedback on the microphone and then swears more audibly than he intends. Shows up in The Film of the Book too.
- In The Canterbury Tales, the Franklyn starts his tale by interrupting the last speaker (whose story was extremely tedious and seemed to be going on forever) to praise him extravagantly until he gets told to shut up and get on with his own tale, at which point he gives an equally lengthy pre-emptive apology for how crude and unrefined his own speech will be. Needless to say, there is nothing wrong with his story at all. Some of the other storytellers make similar comments before starting their tales, with varying degrees of reasonableness; the Miller pre-emptively apologises for offending anyone with his tale because he can tell that he's drunk and likely to be vulgar. He's right, and his story is consequently one of the most memorable and popular with the schoolchildren who end up studying the Tales.
- Nicolae Carpathia from Left Behind is not meant to be this in the text, and doesn't actually use the line, but he can certainly come off that way when he's still artfully pretending to be a man of peace.
- In The Obernewtyn Chronicles, when asked to present his views at the Halfmoon Bay Cheiftain selections, Rolf starts by saying that he is only a simple blacksmith. He then goes on to eloquently and passionately describe what he would wish for the new chieftain to do; this prompts the audience to immediately vote him in.
Live-Action TV
- Blackadder the Third. Prince George hires two actors to help him prepare to give a speech which was written for him by Blackadder:
Mossop: All great orators roar before commencing their speeches. It is the way of things. Ah, Mr. Keanrick, from your Hamlet, please.Keanrick: Hh-hmm (orates) OOOOoooohhhhh To be or not to be.Mossop: From your Julius Caesar.Keanrick: OoooHHHHOOOOHHH Friends, Romans, countrymen......Keanrick: Now shall we try putting it all together?George: Right. (adopts heroic stance, screws up his face) RRROOOAAAAHHHHHHHH— (casual voice) Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...
- In Doctor Who serial "The Horns of Nimon", the Fourth Doctor is being chased through a building, and runs onto a stage, pausing at the podium to say "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I stand before you desperate to find the exit". He then goes down into the audience and starts talking to them, as the guards chasing him run past across the stage and out.
- Firefly: Jayne, when forced to give a public speech for the "Jayne's Day Parade" (It Makes Sense in Context, though that's not how Simon sees it), starts off with "I'm no good with words. Don't...don't use em much, myself". This is pretty much true, but he makes a surprisingly good effort (for Jayne, anyway) commending the gathered "Mudders" for enduring the hardships they face and continuing on despite the raw deal life (and their bosses) have dealt them. Then, when he's exposed as a fraud and someone's killed saving his life anyway, he gives another, much more impromptu speech that's also more heartfelt (and Jerkass-ish), calling them idiots for thinking of him as a hero who would look out for them, but is much more awesome all the same (in no small part because he finishes by singlehandedly tearing down the statue of himself they had built).
- Game of Thrones: Davos Seaworth loves to play up his humble, plebeian origins in an apologetic way before delivering accurate, powerful and convincing dissertations worthy of the best statesman. This is both out of genuine humility and an awareness that bragging in any way of his eloquence or intelligence is not going to be well received by the very people he is trying to win over to a cause. The result is that the arguments he follows up such self deprecating introductions with tend to be highly effective and compelling.
- Averted in Parks and Recreation episode "Go Big or Go Home".
Ron: "I am not usually one for speeches — so goodbye."
- Played with in Stargate SG-1: When Carter gets promoted to major, O'Neill steps up to the podium and begins a speech with the words "Normally, I am a man of very few words", and gets unexpectedly teleported to a starship immediately after those nine words. Now standing alone, watching out from the advanced spaceship's window, he still continues speaking for a few words ("and in conclusion, I would like to say"), until he notices something is odd.
- Parodied on the Saturday Night Live sketch "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer". He'd begin every summation by saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm just a caveman. I fell into some ice and was later revived by some of your scientists". He would then go on about how unaccustomed he was to the entire modern world, until the jury found in his favor out of sympathy.
- Daredevil (2015): When Wilson Fisk decides to make himself a public figure, while speaking on the steps of City Hall:
Wilson Fisk: I'm not very good at this, out, being in public. But I felt the need to speak up for this city that I love with all my heart...
- The Good Place: Janet is a humanoid information access point, more akin to an anthropormophic Siri or Alexa than a person, but hundreds of reboots have greatly enhanced her ability to relate with humans. While the main characters are toasting one another after a small party, she speaks up.
Janet: Because of the way we were conceived of and created, Janets don't typically give speeches...
[beat]
Eleanor: Oh! She's done. She's not gonna give a speech. Okay, cool. - Played with in Sherlock when Sherlock delivers his Best Man speech at John Watson's wedding; he starts with a rambling preamble that becomes teeth-grindingly awkward as he insults the bride, her family, the vicar and the very concept of love. He then proceeds to deliver a speech that moves everyone, including the groom, to tears, using said rambling preamble as a springboard:
"The point I’m trying to make is that I am the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant and all-around obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet. I am dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful, and uncomprehending in the face of the happy. So if I didn’t understand I was being asked to be best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody’s best friend. and certainly not the best friend of the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing...".
Poetry
- The speaker of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" inserts that he has "no skill in speech" in the middle of delivering a dramatic monologue.
Theatre
- Shakespeare loved this trope:
- Mark Antony says this during his funeral oration in Julius Caesar: "I am no orator, as Brutus is". He then proceeds to completely eclipse Brutus' previous speech; his claim that Brutus is an orator is one of the many Stealth Insults in his speech; he's hinting to the crowd that Brutus (who had previously convinced them that killing Caesar was the right thing to do) was a crafter of words rather than a narrator of facts, and thus was just fooling them with propaganda.
- In Henry IV, Part 1, Hotspur repeatedly says that he's not a man of pretty words. He still talks A LOT. His "rousing speech" does get interrupted twice and even his dying words need to be finished by another character.
- In Henry V, the title character courts Princess Katherine through a series of long, flowery speeches, in which he describes himself as a plain honest soldier rather than a courtier.
- In Richard III, Gloucester rants to his political enemies about how unpopular he is, "because I cannot flatter and speak fair". One scene earlier, he just convinced the widow of someone he murdered to fall in love with him through sheer force of personality. At the victim's funeral!
- The title character of Othello also uses this one. Before he explains how he met Desdemona, he goes on for ten or twelve lines about how he's just a plainspoken man of action who can't speak well enough to do himself much good.
- Polonius in Hamlet goes on a lot about how brief he's going to make his speeches and how he's not going to use fancy rhetoric, until the queen finally snaps at him to get to the point.
- Berowne, in Love's Labour's Lost is called out on this by another character - he makes a speech about how he's going to give up all this wordplay and express his love plainly, then goes on to say "My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw", to which she interrupts "Sans 'sans,' I pray you!" - sans being french for "without" and something of an affectation of posh speech.
- In The Taming of the Shrew, during the "wooing scene", after Petruchio makes two affected praises of her beauty, Katherine sarcastically asks him, "Where did you study (i.e. memorize) all this goodly speech?". Petruchio responds, "It is extempore, from my mother wit".
- In G. K. Chesterton's Magic, the conjuror tells the heroine the story of a gardener who found his master in the garden addressing the flowers for practice, to explain his own behavior there; he was practicing his patter.
- Parodied in H.M.S. Pinafore in 'common sailor' Ralph Rackstraw's speech to Josephine:
Rackstraw: I am poor in the essence of happiness, lady — rich only in never-ending unrest. In me there meet a combination of antithetical elements which are at eternal war with one another. Driven hither by objective influences — thither by subjective emotions — wafted one moment into blazing day, by mocking hope — plunged the next into the Cimmerian darkness of tangible despair, I am but a living ganglion of irreconcilable antagonisms. I hope I make myself clear, lady?Josephine: Perfectly. (aside) His simple eloquence goes to my heart.
Video Games
- In Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse The City That Dares Not Sleep, Abraham Lincoln claims that he's not good at speeches before telling an army of Maimtrons to KICK SOME ASS.
- In Killzone 3, Evil Genius villain Jorhan Stahl prefaces his big speech with the words "This is something of a rarity for me because speeches are not my forte, but honesty is". He's lying on both counts.
Web Originals
- Parodied in the Homestar Runner toon A Death-Defying Decemberween. Right before performing his death-defying stunt, Homestar announces "I'm not very good at speeches...". After an awkward pause, he launches right into the stunt without any further words.
- Played with by The Nostalgia Critic, in the one-year anniversary brawl; trying to give an inspirational speech to his "forces" before the brawl commences, he laments his inability to do so.
NC: People, I'm no good at speeches...and well, frankly, that's all I've got. *tries to think of inspirational speeches from movies that the fighters may remember* So! Buck up, drink milk, stay in school, and don't do drugs!
- Quoted verbatim for laughs in Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation review of Middle Earth: Shadow of War to parody orcs as eloquent politicians.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons:
- "If I could just say a few words ... I'd be a better public speaker.".
- Averted in "Simpson Tide":
"Captain Tenille wishes to address you!"."I'm a man of few words. [pause] Any questions?"
- Used well in "Trash of the Titans".
Ray Patterson: Oh gosh. You know, I'm not much on speeches, but it's so gratifying to- (sighs) leave you wallowing in the mess you've made. You're screwed, thank you, bye.
Moe: He's right. He ain't much on speeches.
- In Daria, the title character has these last words to say to the host of characters at Lawndale High:
Um, thank you. I'm not much for public speaking. Or much for speaking. Or, come to think of it, much for the public. And I'm not very good at lying. So let me just say that, in my experience, high school sucks. If I had to do it all over again, I'd have started advanced placement classes in preschool so I could go from eighth grade straight to college. However, given the unalterable fact that high school sucks, I'd like to add that if you're lucky enough to have a good friend and a family that cares, it doesn't have to suck quite as much.
- Futurama: A character hitting on Leela says, "I've never been much good with words, which is why I find myself in such a delicate conundrum".
- George Harrison says this in The Beatles cartoon "Boys" after winning a Mr. Hollywood talent contest.
- Spoken verbatim in the Merrie Melodies short "Hamateur Night" when one character shows off his trained dog. After the dog demonstrates "Sit", "Roll over" and "Play dead", his master commands him, "Speak":
Dog: (clears throat) Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...From the rock-bound coasts of Maine, to the sun-kissed shores of California...".
- Subverted in Smiling Friends, after Charlie is saved from Hell by God and resurrected in the middle of his funeral while completely naked. It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
Charlie: Look. I can barely explain the nutty adventure I just went on. So I'm not going to, I d— I don't wanna talk about it... I've seen the devil.
Real Life
- Frederick Douglass, before making a speech at an anti-slavery convention, apologized for being ignorant from being in slavery so long. He then proceeded to bring the house down with an eloquent, moving, and well-reasoned speech. In his case, he was just unsure of himself and being modest, and "ignorant" meant that he was unfamiliar with, say, Aristotle or Homer or Milton. Douglass was an avid reader who had self-directed much of his education.
- There's a theory that Douglass was using Obfuscating Stupidity when he would say things like this (as he often did), to ensure that his white audience wouldn't just walk out or ignore everything he would say by insulting their "intelligence" by claiming to be an "intelligent black man" - something which simply did not exist as far as many whites of the time were concerned.
- John Quincy Adams had a genuine speech-giving problem, particularly after his defeat for reelection to the presidency by the far more popular Andrew Jackson. He had a tendency to go too highbrow for his audiences with classical and historical references no one got. Then he went to the House of Representatives and was mortified at how weak his speeches were compared to his fellow Representatives...but he got better in his seventeen years there, to the point of pulling this trope off quite well during the Amistad trial at the Supreme Court, initially begging the court's forgiveness since he had not argued in front of them for over twenty years and might "exhibit at once the infirmities of age and the inexperience of youth". He proceeded to give an eight and a half hour speech over the course of two days that blew everyone else away and is credited with winning the case for the illegally-enslaved men.
- The sentiment has been there probably since the beginning of oratory. Lysias (who made a living out of writing speeches for court) was accusing Eratosthenes of killing his brother during his reign as one of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens:
Lysias: Often, I am reduced to great despair, because I might unskillfully make an inexperienced and useless accusation on behalf of my brother.
- G. K. Chesterton frequently apologized for his tendency to mumble and to digress randomly — but neither these nor his tinny voice prevented him from being a brilliant orator and debater.
- After being silent in films for many years, Harpo Marx would often give a hilarious speech beginning with these exact words.
- In a less specific sense to public speaking, people who are just becoming proficient in a language, or immigrating to a new country, may often apologize for not handling their new language properly. Often, though, it comes across as better than some native-speakers, who have to put so much less effort into their speech.
- Winston Churchill began his well-prepared, rehearsed and clearly memorized very first public speech by saying that if it was pardonable in any speaker to begin with the apology, "unaccustomed as I am to public speaking", it would be pardonable in his case.
- Even counts a trifle with Abraham Lincoln, who considered his Gettysburg Address an absolute disaster, being quick, short, and to the point. It was also brilliant.
