Instead of being a tragedy or a story of courtly love, Romeo and Juliet is a play whose characters are driven by the processes of adolescence. Their elders are unable to understand their adolescent problems because of their own failures in negotiating adolescence. Romeo is shown to be engaged in the process of separation from his parents. His love for Rosalind is seen as a typical adolescent crush on an unattainable object, and his dropping Rosalind when he falls in love with Juliet is viewed as part of normal development rather than as fickleness. Cox points out typical adolescent qualities in others: Benvolio's lack of understanding of his friend Romeo's nocturnal wandering behavior when he is exhibiting exactly