The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 371, May 23, 1829

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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.
All men are critics, in a greater or less degree. They can generalize upon the merits and defects of a picture, although they cannot point out the details of the defects, or in what the beauty of a picture consists; and to prove this, only let the reader visit the Exhibition at Somerset House, and watch the little critical coteries that collect round the most attractive paintings. Could all these criticisms be embodied, but in terms of art, what a fine lecture would they make for the Royal Academy.
Our discursive notice would, probably, contribute but little to this joint-stock production; but as even comparing notes is not always unprofitable, we venture to give our own.
The present Exhibition is much superior to that of last year. There are more works of imagination, and consequently greater attractions for the lover of painting; for life-breathing as have been many of the portraits in recent exhibitions, the interest which they created was of quite a different nature to that which we take in not a few of the pictures of the present collection. Portraits still superabound, and finely painted portraits too; but, strange to say, there are fewer female portraits in the present than in any recent exhibition.