“The whole place was set up on the premise that the theatre would be a disaster.” Dominic Dromgoole is close to talking himself out of a job. According to its artistic director, Shakespeare’s Globe – which was completed in 1997, the brainchild of American actor and director Sam Wanamaker – was never really meant to be anything like the success it has been. “The intention was to recreate an authentic Elizabethan playhouse and by incredibly detailed and scrupulous work they managed to do that. Then they opened the doors and they literally thought no one would come. So you’ve got the exhibition downstairs, the bar, the restaurant, the balcony room, an event space, the shop ... all of that, in Sam Wanamaker’s imagination and in the first economic models they did, was the engine that would subsidise this theatre that no one, but no one, would want to come and see. They didn’t think anyone would want to stand in the yard or sit on those horrible benches. They thought it was ridiculous. Then the doors opened and, suddenly, people flooded in, and they adored it.”

In fact, the Globe is so successful that, alone among British theatres of its size, it receives no government funding. Consequently, when I ask Dromgoole the day after the result of the London mayoral election how he will be working with the new fellow a few hundred yards downstream at City Hall, he responds: “Oh, God, I hope there’ll be as little contact as possible. Once every year we do a big Shakespeare’s birthday celebration and they’ve been contributing funds to that for the last four or five years to a very minor extent. That’s been nice but it’s one of the most liberating things about this place, being outside the subsidised theatre network, that you don’t have to get drawn into that sort of culture.”