The Fortune Playhouse
Reading edition
The Engraving represents one of the playhouses of Shakspeare's time, as the premises appeared a few years since. This theatre was in Golden Lane, Barbican, and was built by that celebrated and benevolent actor Edward Alleyn, the pious founder of Dulwich College, in 1599. It was burnt in 1624, but rebuilt in 1629. A story is told of a large treasure being found in digging for the foundation, and it is probable that the whole sum fell to Alleyn. Upon equal probability, is the derivation of the name "The Fortune." The theatre was a spacious brick building, and exhibited the royal arms in plaster on its front. These are retained in the Engraving; where the disposal of the lower part on the building into shops, &c. is a sorry picture of the "base purposes" to which a temple of the Drama has been converted.
Among the theatrico-antiquarian gossip of The Fortune is, that it was once the nursery for Henry VIII.'s children—but "no scandal about the"—we hope.