A jokingly-sarcastic way of making light of a truly serious situation --- Abe was **shot to death** at the play's "ending", for goodness' sake!! :P
A couple of excellent occasions to dust off da ol' "So aside from the ending, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" gag would be if either someone has just been helped out of the mud and is so incredibly soiled that he's having to be stripped naked and cleaned off with a pressure-washer, or you go to visit him in the hospital after a serious accident and he's all swathed in casts and bandages and/or hooked up to a myriad of tubes and wires, and so you're trying to cheer him up a little.
by QuacksO September 16, 2018