ABSTRACT
The foregoing discussion of the dramatis personae has shown that their verbal behavior towards each other characterizes their roles. The scenes of their encounters are, logically, the next largest unit in analyzing Ibn al-Rūmī’s dramaturgy. The many forms these take are best demonstrated by example; however, a sufficient commonality among them warrants a classification along the major constants. A first subdivision follows the grammatical person of the protagonist(s), distinguishing scenes that include both the first and second persons, from scenes involving only one (first or second) person. The grammatical third person does not appear in scenes; rather, it marks absent personae1 and characterizes another type of passage, discussed in the following chapter. Secondarily, I distinguish between scenes according to their participants, modalities and limits of space and time.
