Le Petit Musée de Guignol

This guide to Le Petit Musee de Guignol in Lyon follows Laurent Mourguet, a Lyon silk worker who turned street dentist around 1804 and invented a puppet character to draw a crowd before pulling teeth. It traces how that puppet, later joined by the cobbler Gnafron and Guignol's wife Madelon, became a stand-in for a working city that mocked landlords, tax collectors and the police. By 1852, new decrees required every script to be submitted for approval before a show could open, and improvisation was banned outright.