He appears to have been page to Jerónimo Manrique de Lara, Bishop of Ávila, who helped him to complete his studies at the University of Alcalá de Henares. Lope never forgot a personal kindness, and in the _Dragontea_ he acknowledges his debt to his benefactor whose intention was clearly excellent; but it is doubtful if Lope gained much by his stay at Alcalá except the horrid farrago of undigested learning which disfigures so much of his non-dramatic work, and is so rightly ridiculed by Cervantes. His undergraduate days were scarcely over when he made the acquaintance of Elena Osorio, daughter of a theatrical manager named Jerónimo Velázquez, whom he has celebrated as Filis in his early _romances_. He fought under Santa Cruz at the Azores in 1582, and next year became secretary to the Marqués de las Navas. He is one of the many poets lauded by Cervantes in the _Canto de Calíope_, and, though Cervantes bestows his praise indiscriminatingly, it may be inferred that Lope enjoyed a certain reputation when the _Galatea_ was published in 1585. He was then twenty-three, and was no doubt already a practised playwright: his acquaintance with Velázquez would probably open the theatres to him, and enable him to get a hearing on the stage. So far this intimacy was valuable to Lope, but it finally came near to wrecking his career. Elena Osorio was not apparently a model of constancy, and Lope was a passionate, jealous, headstrong youth with a sharp pen. On December 29, 1587, he was arrested at the theatre for libelling his fickle flame and her father, and on February 7, 1588, he was exiled from Madrid for eight years, and from Castile for two. The court seems to have anticipated that Lope might not think fit to obey its order, for it provided that if he returned to Madrid before the fixed limit of time he was to be sent to the galleys, and that if he entered Castile he was to be executed.