If Ms. Merkel, who is routinely depicted as dour but in person often conveys a mischievous wit, found irony in Moldova, she kept it to herself.
Sir Max Beerbohm, the 20th-century English wit, found "two elements in the public's humour: delight in suffering, contempt for the unfamiliar".
Mr. Warfield said that Mr. Dole, who as a senator was known for his quick wit, found the tenor of the coverage in the presidential race frustrating.
Yet some people in the audience called the work wonderful -- which is true of the energy and wit found in specific moments.
Mr. Dewar, a skilled parliamentarian and formidable debater with a biting wit, found himself roundly criticized when the new Parliament building, which came to be called "Donald's Dome," was plagued by delays and cost overruns.
A blunt and touching collection of LeDuff's street vignettes, written for The Times, many of them spiked with the sadness and wit found only at the bar rails of New York's most notorious watering holes.
Another all-volunteer group, the Knit-Wits, finds similar satisfactions in turning out hand-knit sweaters, scarves, socks and baby clothes that they sell to raise money for White Plains Hospital.
It's November 2011, and Derian, who owns a pair of namesake stores up the street, has, by some combination of luck and wits, found himself in possession of a whole floor of an 1850s East Village building whose ambiance has only slightly changed in the ensuing century and a half.
In William Keighley's "The Man Who Came to Dinner," from 1942, which is screening at MOMA on Feb. 19, Davis plays the sensible secretary to Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley), a metropolitan wit who finds himself laid up with a broken leg in a polite town house in Mesalia, Ohio.
But until someone fills its music and lyrics with more zest, elevates the level and consistency of its wit and finds the magic to make its wise, bittersweet romance more palpable, "Enter the Guardsman" will remain a modest, intermittently charming entertainment.
