Iōannīs Zambelios (Lefkada 1787 – Lefkada 1857) was born into a prominent family and after his initial education moved to Italy (1804-08) to study law and philosophy in Bologna and Pisa. During these years he was influenced by Ugo Foscolo, whom he met and accompanied to Pavia, and later (in Paris, 1809) by Adamantios Koraīs. In Pisa and Florence, he befriended other Greek students such as Andreas Moustoxydīs, Theofilos Kairīs and Ioannīs Kolettīs. On his return to the Ionian Islands (1810), where he functioned as a lawyer and magistrate until 1850, he participated in the scholarly circles of his time, involving contacts with Andreas Kalvos and, on Corfu, with Dionysios Solōmos. He was inducted into the Filiki Etereia (“Friendly Society”) in 1819 or 1820, and was actively engaged in the War of Independence, personally taking part in expeditions from Lefkas to the Greek mainland.

Although his theatrical work was primarily a hobby, Zambelios is the premier playwright of his generation and strongly influenced the later century with his twelve plays, written between 1817 and 1844, most of them patriotically-minded and based on inspiring historical figures – Timoleōn, Konstantinos Palaiologos (on the last emperor and fall of Constantinople, with discernible influences from Schiller), Geōrgios Kastriōtīs (on Skanderbeg), Rīgas Thessalos, Markos Bossarīs, Iōannīs Kapodistrias, Geōrgios Karaïskakīs, Christina Anagnōstopoulou, Diakos, Kodros, Odysseys Androutsos and Mīdeia (“Medea”, an adaptation of Cesare Della Valle’s 1833 tragedy). He combined the formal principles of classicism with heroic themes from the history of modern Greece; Romantic features (also non-classicist formal elements such as multiple protagonists, mass scenes, violation of the unity of time and space) gradually became evident in his work, which developed in the direction of a religiously-inflected Hellenism.

As for the thematic concerns of his post-revolutionary national/historical tragedies, Zambelios remained faithful to his main classicist example, Vittorio Alfieri and the motif of the tyrant and the tyrannical regime, for example in the works Markos Bossarīs, Rīgas Thessalos and Geōrgios Karaïskakīs – the latter a borderline case in the demarcation of “historical drama”. Christina Anagnōstopoulou was inspired by true events from the War of Independence and emphasizes the patriotism of a common Greek woman in connection with her Christian faith.

Zambelios’ work was rooted in pre-revolutionary Hellenism, and widely and lastingly influenced the post-revolutionary period (until the end of the 19th century), remaining part of the repertory of the theatre companies that travelled Asia Minor. His moralistic, national-revolutionary and patriotic work thus establishes a transitional link between the anti-tyrannical values of the Enlightenment and new ideologies and aesthetics of Romantic-Nationalist drama.