A boy playing among the warehouses of London kicks a soccer ball into an abandoned theater. There he finds an enchanted cape that transports him back in time right onto the stage of one of William Shakespeare's plays!

When a boy being chased through present-day London seeks refuge in the National Gallery, a dog escapes from the painting of one Dutch master and together they leap into the painting of another, where their adventures in seventeenth-century Delft are a prelude to returning to London and continuing the chase.