[II.125] charactery: "writing by characters or strange marks." Brutus therefore means that he will divulge to her the secret cause of the sadness marked on his countenance. 'Charactery' seems to mean simply 'writing' in the well-known passage in The Merry Wives of Windsor, V, v, 77: "Fairies use flowers for their charactery." So in Keats: "Before high-piled books in charactery Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain."
[II.126] Editors from Pope down have been busy trying to mend the grammar and the rhythm of this line. But in Shakespeare the full pause has often the value of a syllable, and the omission of the relative is common in Elizabethan literature. See Abbott, § 244.
[II.127] Re-enter ... with Dyce | Enter ... and Ff after [Exit Portia].
[II.128] l. 313 (and elsewhere): Ligarius | Cai. Ff.
[II.129] To wear a kerchief. It was a common practice in England for those who were sick to wear a kerchief on their heads. So in Fuller's Worthies, Cheshire, 1662, quoted by Malone: "If any there be sick, they make him a posset and tye a kerchief on his head: and if that will not mend him, then God be merciful to him."
[II.130] I here discard my sickness. Ligarius here pulls off the kerchief. Cf. Northumberland's speech, 2 Henry IV, I, i, 147, "hence, thou sickly quoif! Thou art a guard too wanton for the head."
[II.131] In Shakespeare's time, 'exorcist' and 'conjurer' were used indifferently. The former has since come to mean only 'one who drives away spirits'; the latter, 'one who calls them up.'
[II.132] My mortified spirit: my spirit that was dead in me. So 'mortifying groans' in The Merchant of Venice, I, i, 82, and 'mortified man' in Macbeth, V, ii, 5. Words directly derived from Latin are often used, by Shakespeare and sixteenth century writers, in a signification peculiarly close to the root notion of the word.
[II.133] l. 327 Two lines in Ff.
[II.134] Thunder Ff.