Word: witting
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Playwright Enid Bagnold has built her comedy on subtle dialogue and bizarre characterizations. Since she seems to believe that the soul of wit is not brevity but irrelevancy, there are some moments--especially in the first act--when the sudden monologues about plants and fertilizers make the play formless and uninteresting. But once the characterizations are well established, the playwright manages to maintain a tight, logical consistency between the fanciful lines and the equally volatile people who utter them...
...thus plucking Shavian phrases from Shavian text for its lyrics, Fair Lady wondrously preserves the salt-and-pepper flavor of Shaw's intellect while transmitting the gaiety of his wit and adding a sweetness he only grumpily betrayed. From Professor Higgins' opening song the Shavian tone...
There is no doubting Thomas's skill. No profound intellectual, Dekker still possessed consummate wit, and produced a busty, gusty, lusty farce of great warmth and vigor. Teeming with bawdy doubles ententes, it makes Measure for Measure read like Sunday sermon. And when Dekker doesn't call a spade a spade, he calls it a steamshovel...
There is nothing funny about being funny, at least not for TV comedy writers. Many have gone from gags to riches, but the men who sell their wit to TV comics insist that the job of writing a series of shows that are supposed to make people laugh, week after week, is the most grueling job ever invented in the name of humor...
Personality: Reticent, honest, quick-witted, forthright and cool, he is smallish (5 ft. 7½ in.), a conservative dresser and the possessor of a deep bass voice and a dry, often penetrating wit. Unostentatious, he drives to his Pittsburgh office from his home in Sewickley, Pa. in a 1954 two-door Ford, likes to watch baseball games. Hobbies: golf, fishing and photographing his grandchildren. Bargainer Stephens' definition of the requirements of his job: "To be a skilled negotiator takes character, integrity, quick wit, a keen mind, the ability to speak as the moment requires−with humor, sincerity, pathos...