Mr Doran said academics had found “a process of hetereosexualisation of those sonnets during the Victorian period”, where the pronouns in them were changed.

He said: “It wasn’t somehow quite kosher for the great national bard to possibly have affections for his own sex and therefore that process, to kind of whitewash through the sonnets.

“I am just aware how many times Shakespeare has gay characters, and how sometimes those gay characters are not played as gay, and I think in the 21st century that’s no longer acceptable.”

Mr Doran said the character of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice is “absolutely clearly in love with the young man Bassanio and sometimes that is kind of toned down”.

Their love had been wrongly portrayed as “we chaps are very fond of each other”.

He went on: “It’s not, it’s clearly a very particular portrait of a gay man and I think in the 21st century it’s no longer acceptable to play that as anything other than a homosexual.”

The debate over Shakespeare’s sexuality erupted three years ago when leading scholars clashed in the letters page of the Times Literary Supplement about the issue.

Sir Brian Vickers triggered the spat by criticising a book suggesting sonnet 116 appeared in a “primarily homosexual context”.