Guignol

"[citation needed] Laurent Mourguet, Guignol's creator, was born into a family of modest silk weavers on 3 March 1769.

When hard times fell on the silk trade during the French Revolution, he became a peddler and, in 1797, started to practice dentistry, which in those days was simply the pulling of teeth.

[citation needed] Mourguet's first shows featured Polichinelle, a character borrowed from the Italian commedia dell'arte who, in Britain, would become Punch.

By 1804, the success was such that he gave up dentistry altogether and became a professional puppeteer, creating his own scenarios drawing on the concerns of his working-class audience and improvising references to the news of the day.

He developed characters closer to the daily lives of his Lyon audience, first Gnafron, a wine-loving cobbler, later Guignol, in 1808.