He will be all things to all men that he himself may be saved; and his love of peace runs parallel with his readiness for good cheer. He likes to enjoy himself and soon drinks himself drunk. The very servants see through his infirmity:
Sec. Serv. As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out “no more”; reconciles them to his entreaty and himself to the drink.[205]
(II. vii. 6.)
And they proceed to draw the moral of the whole situation. Lepidus’ ineptitude is due to the same circumstance that brings Costard’s criticism on Sir Nathaniel when the curate breaks down in the pageant. “A foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, ... but, for Alexander,—alas, you see how ’tis,—a little o’erparted.” Lepidus too is a marvellous good neighbour, but for a Triumvir,—alas, you see how ’tis,—a little o’erparted. He is attempting a part or role that is too big for him. He is in a position and company where his nominal influence goes for nothing and his want of perception puts him to the blush.
Sec. Serv. Why, this it is to have a name in great men’s fellowship: I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partizan I could not heave.
First Serv. To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in’t, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks.
(II. vii. 12.)
In his efforts at bonhomie, he becomes so bemused that even Antony, generally so affable and courteous, does not trouble to be decently civil, and flouts him to his wine-sodden face, with impertinent school-boy jests about the crocodile that is shaped like itself, and is as broad as it has breadth, and weeps tears that are wet. Caesar, ever on the guard, asks in cautious admonition: “Will this description satisfy him?” But Antony is scornfully aware that he may dismiss punctilios:
With the health that Pompey gives him; else he is a very epicure.
(II. vii. 56.)