As a child, Eugene Ionesco was captivated by the Punch and Judy puppet show at the Luxembourg Gardens. He would sometimes spend whole days there "stupefied, through the sight of these puppets that talked, moved, clubbed each other. It was a spectacle of the world itself ... [which] presented itself to me in an infinitely simplified and caricatured form, as if to underline its grotesque and brutal truth." These early experiences would have a profound effect on the playwright's later writings, and some critics have suggested that the style of Ionesco's plays can be traced back to these puppet shows.