A Hackney pub carrying the globe itself – a name that spans the whole world, with a happy echo of Shakespeare’s famous theatre
The Prat’s naming desk contemplates the entire planet at The Globe, a Hackney pub carrying a name that spans the whole world – with a happy echo, too, of the most famous theatre in history. The globe is a grand and expansive emblem, and the naming desk enjoys the sheer scope of it.
The world in the name
“The Globe” is a classic pub name with a wonderfully expansive character – it holds, quite literally, the whole world. As an emblem, the globe suggests travel, trade, exploration and the wider world beyond the parish, and it was a natural and popular sign in a great trading nation whose ships and merchants reached across the seas. There is an appealing ambition to it: where other pubs take a local beast or a family name, the Globe reaches for the entire planet, promising a certain worldliness and breadth. It is a name that opens out onto the whole world from a single Hackney corner.
The Shakespearean echo
The naming desk cannot pass the Globe without a bow to the theatre. The Globe Theatre, on the south bank of the Thames, was the great playhouse of Shakespeare’s company, where many of his masterpieces were first performed – and its name has become forever bound up with the glory of the Elizabethan stage and the greatest writer in the language. Whether or not a particular Globe pub means the connection, the name cannot help but summon that theatrical splendour, lending the place a shimmer of Shakespearean glamour. The naming desk is happy to raise a glass to the Bard and his wooden O regardless.
The Hackney local
The Globe serves its patch in Hackney with the character of a proper neighbourhood local. A pub carrying so grand and expansive an emblem lends its corner a note of worldliness and history, connecting an ordinary East London street to the whole wide world – and, perhaps, to the glory of the Shakespearean stage. Its solid rating reflects a genuine local following, gathering beneath the sign of the globe.
The trading nation’s sign
The naming desk reflects on how fitting the globe was as a sign for a great maritime and trading nation. Britain’s wealth and power were built on the sea and on commerce that spanned the world, and the globe – emblem of that worldwide reach – was a natural and proud choice, particularly for pubs frequented by merchants, sailors and travellers. It spoke of horizons far beyond the parish, of ships and cargoes and distant lands, and it lent an ordinary pub a whiff of the wider world. There is something appealing in that outward-looking ambition, and the naming desk enjoys a pub that, in its very name, gestures toward the whole globe from a single London street.
The verdict
A rating of 4.4 across some 407 reviews marks the Globe as a well-established and much-loved Hackney local. A pub carrying the globe itself – a name spanning the whole world, with an echo of Shakespeare’s famous theatre – is the naming desk’s kind of grand, expansive heritage. The Prat orders a pint, contemplates the whole wide world and the glory of the stage, and toasts the all-encompassing Globe.
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