Globe’s new director Michelle Terry: Row over exit of predecessor did not put me off

She said she had agreed to abide by “certain parameters around light and sound” but insisted the Globe would remain experimental in its approach.

The actress said she was asked to apply for the role after she wrote to under-fire chief executive Neil Constable offering her support.

She said: “I think there were lots of people who felt a loyalty to this place so I wrote a letter, sort of a pledge of allegiance, to Neil saying, ‘I don’t know what has happened, I don’t really want to know what has happened but I pledge my allegiance to the artistic future of the building’ and then got a letter back saying would I like to convert that to a formal application and that is what I did.”

Terry said the whole theatre remained a “thrilling” place to perform. “I think any actor will tell you the minute you walk on the stage you’re terrified and you enter the stage as a human and leave it feeling like a god.

“When you are able to say those lines to people and see the whites of their eyes, something about the plays makes sense in a way that has never made sense anywhere else I have done it.”

Terry, who said she will continue to act at the Globe while running the theatre, is in the process of commissioning her first work — a new play about the woman who may have inspired some of Shakespeare’s love poetry.