This book records the work of a teacher making Shakespeare’s plays accessible to college students, including motor vehicle mechanic apprentices and secretarial trainees, through the drama-in-education life-learning principles, called Mantle of the Expert, of Dorothy Heathcote. These principles are also applied to those excluded from school, to music teaching for Special Needs pupils and English tutorials for young people. Included are detailed descriptions of workshops given by Dorothy Heathcote on Antony and Cleopatra and Much Ado About Nothing to students of the Mencap National College, Dilston, Northumberland.

Dorothy Heathcote MBE (29 August 1926 - 8 October 2011) was a drama teacher and academic who used the method of teacher in role as an approach to teaching across the curriculum in schools and later in other settings. She was a highly accomplished teacher of theatre and drama for learning and amongst her many achievements she defined and developed mantle of the expert as an approach to teaching. The key book she wrote with Gavin Bolton, that explains her Mantle of the expert approach to Education, is called Drama for Learning (1994). The most significant previous book that explains her Drama approach was written by Betty Jane Wagner and was entitled Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium.