page_title: Fortune Playhouse
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Fortune Playhouse / History / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: St Giles, Cripplegate, London EC2 - Window, near to London, City of London, Great Britain. Depicting Edward Alleyn
context_page_description: The Fortune Playhouse was a historic theatre in London. It was located between Whitecross Street and the modern Golden Lane, just outside the City of London. It was founded about 1600, and suppressed by the Puritan Parliament in 1642.
context_section_description: The plot of land on which the theatre sat was approximately square, 127 feet (39 m) across and 129 feet (39 m) deep. The theatre was built on a foundation of lime and brick; square-shaped (uniquely among the period's amphitheatres), each wall measured eighty feet outside and fifty-five within. The building was three stories tall; the first-floor galleries were twelve feet high, those on the second floor eleven; those on the third, nine. Each row of galleries was twelve feet deep. Henslowe and Alleyn specified that the Fortune outdo the Globe "in every point for scantlings"; they also provided, in accordance with common practice, for two-penny rooms and gentlemen's rooms. The building was constructed of lath and plaster, with wood floors in the galleries.
  The stage, and tiring-house, were thrust forward into the middle of the square. The tiring-house had glazed windows; the manner of its attachment to the stage is unknown but presumably similar to that of the Swan. The stage was forty-three feet across; it was covered with tile.
caption: A depiction of the Fortune in a stained glass memorial to Edward Alleyn
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