The idea of the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. He was impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, so he decided to write an absurd play named ***L'anglais sans peine*** ("English without toil"). Another working title for the play was ***Il pleut des chiens et des chats*** ("It's raining cats and dogs"). He originally wrote the play in his native language Romanian, then wrote it again in his adopted language French.