[1] Plutarch quotes a line spoken by Merope in this scene in his essay On Meat-Eating (Moralia 998e) and adds, "what a stir she rouses in the theatre as she brings them to their feet in terror lest she wound the youth before the old man [who had served as secret messenger between mother and son] can stop her!"
Scipione Maffei premiered his tragedy Merope in Verona on June 12, 1713; it quickly became popular throughout Italy and beyond: "It was everywhere translated, everywhere mouthed and discussed.
"[2] Catherine Mary Phillimore wrote:It is a strong proof of the power of Maffei's mind that without [a love intrigue], he should have succeeded in winning the public favour at a period when a romance of some kind was considered indispensable to any drama.
Maffei wrote his Merope with the intention of proving that it was possible to excite the sympathy and sustain the interest of the audience by a plot depending entirely on the strong affection existing between mother and son, when brought out and placed in a vivid light by situations of extreme peril.
In his introduction to the latter, Arnold surveyed the European development of the story and explained that he had reworked into his own dramatic poem[4] the fifty lines still recorded of the lost Greek original.