Youth

Flix Lope de Vega y Carpio was born in Madrid to a family of undistinguished origins,
recent arrivals in the capital from Valle de Carriedo in Cantabria. His father, Flix de
Vega, was an embroiderer. Little is known of his mother, Francisca Fernndez Flrez.
He later added the distinguished name of Carpio from one of his in-laws.
After a brief stay in Valladolid, his father moved to Madrid in 1561, perhaps drawn by
the possibilities of the new capital city. However, Lope de Vega would later affirm that
his father arrived in Madrid through a love affair from which his future mother was to
rescue him. Thus the writer became the fruit of this reconciliation and owed his
existence to the same jealousies he would later analyze so much in his dramatic works.
The first indications of young Lope's genius became apparent in his earliest years. At
the age of five he was already reading Spanish and Latin, and by his tenth birthday he
was translating Latin verse. He wrote his first play when he was 12, possibly El
verdadero amante, as he would later affirm in his dedication of the work to his son
Lope.
His great talent bore him to the school of poet and musician Vicente Espinel in Madrid,
to whom he later always referred with veneration. In his fourteenth year he continued
his studies in the Colegio Imperial, a Jesuit school in Madrid, from which he absconded
to take part in a military expedition in Portugal. Following that escapade, he had the
good fortune of being taken into the protection of the Bishop of vila, who recognized
the lad's talent and saw him enrolled in the University of Alcal. Following graduation
Lope had planned to follow in his patron's footsteps and join the priesthood, but those
plans were dashed by his falling in love and realizing that celibacy was not for him.
Thus he failed to attain a bachelor's degree and made what living he could as a secretary
to aristocrats or by writing plays.
In 1583 Lope enlisted in the Spanish Navy and saw action at the Battle of Ponta
Delgada in the Azores, under the command of his future friend lvaro de Bazn, 1st
Marquis of Santa Cruz, to whose son he would later dedicate a play.
Following this he returned to Madrid and began his career as a playwright in earnest. He
also began a love affair with Elena Osorio (the "Filis" of his poems), an actress
separated from her husband, actor Cristbal Caldern, and the daughter of a leading
theater owner. When, after some five years of this torrid affair, Elena spurned Lope in
favor of another suitor, his vitriolic attacks on her and her family landed him in jail for
libel and, ultimately, earned him the punishment of eight years' banishment from the
court and two years' banishment from Castile.

Exile
He went into exile undaunted, taking with him the 16-year-old Isabel de Alderete y
Urbina, known in his poems by the anagram "Belisa," the daughter of Philip II's court
painter, Diego de Urbina. The two married under pressure from her family on 10 May
1588.

Just a few weeks later, on 29 May, Lope signed up for another tour of duty with the
Spanish Navy: this was the summer of 1588, and the Armada was about to sail against
England. It is likely that his military enlistment was the condition required by Isabel's
family, eager to be rid of such an ill presentable son-in-law, to forgive him for carrying
her away.[2]
Lope's luck again served him well, however, and his ship, the San Juan, was one of the
vessels to make it home to Spanish harbors in the aftermath of that failed expedition.
Back in Spain by December 1588, he settled in the city of Valencia. There he lived with
Isabel de Urbina and continued perfecting his dramatic formula participating regularly
in the tertulia known as the Academia de los nocturnos, in the company of such
accomplished dramatists as the canon Francisco Agustn Trrega, the secretary to the
Duke of Ganda Gaspar de Aguilar, Guilln de Castro, Carlos Boil, and Ricardo de
Turia. With them he learned to violate the unity of action by weaving two plots together
in a single play, a technique known as imbroglio.
In 1590, at the end of his two years' exile from the realm, he moved to Toledo to serve
Francisco de Ribera Barroso, who later became the 2nd Marquis of Malpica, and, some
time later, Antonio lvarez de Toledo, 5th Duke of Alba. In this later appointment he
became gentleman of the bedchamber to the ducal court of the House of Alba, where he
lived from 1592 to 1595. Here he read the work of Juan del Encina from whom he took
the character of the donaire, perfecting still further his dramatic formula. In the fall of
1594, Isabel de Urbina died of postpartum complications. It was around this time that
Lope wrote his pastoral novel La Arcadia, which included many poems.

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Lope's house in Madrid (16101635).

In 1595, following Isabel's death in childbirth, he left the Duke's service and eight
years having passed returned to Madrid. There were other love affairs and other
scandals: Antonia Trillo de Armenta, who earned him another lawsuit, and Micaela de
Lujn, an illiterate but beautiful actress, who inspired a rich series of sonnets and

rewarded him with four children. In 1598 he married Juana de Guardo, the daughter of a
wealthy butcher. Nevertheless, his trysts with others including Micaela continued.