Music plays. Enter two or three Servants with a banquet

FIRST SERVANT         Here they’ll be anon. Some o’ their plants are ill rooted already; the least wind i’th’ world will blow them down.

SECOND SERVANT    Lepidus is high-coloured.

FIRST SERVANT         They have made him drink alms-drink.

SECOND SERVANT    As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out ‘No more!’—reconciles them to his entreaty and himself to th’ drink.

FIRST SERVANT         But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.                            (2.7.1-9)

The party’s underway already, and the implication is that the dining part of the feast has taken place elsewhere on the ship; the banquet, the after-dinner drinks and sweetmeats, the entertainment, the really indulgent bit (and the serious drinking) is going to take place here, where the servants are putting the finishing touches to the preparations just before the guests come through. (This little interlude also allows the rest of the company to form up, and Menas and Enobarbus to join them, perhaps with an adjustment to their costume to indicate the festive nature of the occasion. In modern productions there’s often singing and dancing as the crowd enters, so this exchange between the servants can be played against considerable background noise.)

Realising that the revellers will arrive at any moment—here they’ll be anon—the servants compare notes and swap gossip as to the state they’re in. Some o’ their plants are ill-rooted already; the least wind i’th’ world will blow them down. Already some of the guests are unsteady and swaying on their feet (and even green in the face?! feet are planted like trees, of course); a reminder, too, that this party is taking place on board ship, not a comfortable environment for those with a low tolerance for alcohol. Swaaaaaaay, lurch, stagger. Lepidus in particular is already high-coloured, red in the face, and this is because they’ve made him drink alms-drink, which apparently means that he’s been forced to drink every time there’s been a toast. Even the servants recognise Lepidus’s weakness and how he’s mocked and taken advantage of by the others: Antony, Caesar and Pompey are bickering together, pinching each other by the disposition, niggling away, inevitably rubbing each other up the wrong way (the servants also are all too aware that the principals here don’t get on, that their alliance is fragile and even in some respects feigned, despite the feasting). But Lepidus keeps trying to keep the peace, trying to make them be friends: he cries out ‘No more!’, pack it in, play nicely together; they do, temporarily, giving in to his entreaty, and then he has to drink to them, reconciling himself to another drink. He may think that he’s keeping a kind of peace between Antony and Caesar, Caesar and Pompey, the first servant observes, but in acting like this, Lepidus is going against his own natural inclinations, behaving out of character: he is raising the greater war between him and his discretion. He’s certainly not conducting himself with his usual prudence and circumspection. And it’s not going to end well.