The story of the play is very simple, in fact it merely echoes the myth that has been handed down by the Greek people since antiquity and in particular by the poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses: the story goes that the nymph Daphne, targeted by the lover god Apollo, asks her father Peneus, a river deity, to be turned into a laurel tree in order to escape the god who is chasing her. Her request is immediately granted.
The work merely depicts the moment of maximum pathos in the story, at the very moment when Daphne’s limbs are mutating to become branches and tree bark.
The extreme beauty of the two models is rendered above all by their humanity, and also by the terror that is portrayed in Daphne’s eyes as she begins to observe her own changing body, and this fear can be seen just by looking at her face.
