]
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.
According to the testimony of Ben Jonson and others, Alleyn was the
first actor of his time, and of course played leading characters in the
plays of Shakspeare and Jonson. He was probably the Kemble of his day,
for his biographers tell us such was his celebrity, that he drew crowds
of spectators after him wherever he performed; so that possessing some
private patrimony, with a careful and provident disposition, he soon
became master of an establishment of his own--and this was the
_Fortune_. Although Alleyn left behind him a large sum, it is hardly
probable that he made it here; for in his diary, which, we believe is
extant, he records that he once had so slender an audience, that the
whole receipts of the house amounted to no more than three pounds and a
few odd shillings--a sum which would not pay the expenses; for it
appears by the MS.
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