[2] The play is structured with a framing device set in 1922, when Lawrence was hiding under an assumed name as "Aircraftman Ross" in the Royal Air Force, and is being disciplined by his Flight Lieutenant for alleged misconduct.

Lawrence is being given an unofficial assignment as a liaison officer to the forces of the Arab Revolt, under Prince Feisal (who, although he is frequently mentioned, never appears as a character).

Lawrence later meets Auda ibu Tayi, leader of the Howeitat tribe of Bedouin, using flattery to convert him to the Arab cause (he has been paid off by the Turks to support them).

Auda and Lawrence soon plan an expedition through the Nefud Desert to capture the Turkish-held port of Aqaba, which is weakly defended from the landward side.

At the end of Act I, Lawrence arrives at an army outpost in the Sinai Peninsula and uses a telephone station (despite the protests of a British naval officer) to report the Arab capture of Aqaba.

This is a deliberate action by the General, who feels that Lawrence is too extraordinary an enemy to simply kill; he must destroy his will and his personality through such an act, thus revealing his weakness.

At the beginning of Act III, Allenby has just received word of the fall of Jerusalem and is posing for photographs for a journalist named Franks (a stand-in for Lowell Thomas), who requests an interview with Lawrence.

Speaking with an RAF officer, Flight Lieutenant Higgins, Lawrence recounts his own force's hand in the operation, including the massacre of 4,000 Turks outside Tafas, in retaliation for their sack of the village.