and he has already confessed that he is known to be
one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in’t; ... one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.
(II. i. 52 and 56.)
It is almost comic to hear him consoling Volumnia on her son’s banishment when she moves off to lament “in anger, Juno-like,” with an invitation: “You’ll sup with me?” (iv. ii. 49). And wholly comic is his explanation of Cominius’ rebuff by Coriolanus, an explanation suggested no doubt by subjective considerations:
He was not taken well; he had not dined:
The veins unfill’d, our blood is cold, and then
We pout upon the morning, are unapt
To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff’d
These pipes and these conveyances of the blood
With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls