Guignol was created by Laurent Mourguet, a silk weaver who found his products were no longer in demand in the turbulent days of the French Revolution. Instead he took up teeth extraction, carried out with a crude pair of pliers and without anaestethic. Mourguet made his money from medecines sold afterwards to kill the pain, largely consisting of neat alcohol. So apprehensive, with good cause, were many of his patients, that to distract them Mourguet set up a puppet show in front of his dentist’s chair. By 1804 this had proved so successful that Mourguet gave up dentistry and became a professional puppeteer.

In 1808 Mourguet invented Guignol, a chameleon who in turn could be a silk weaver, a shoemaker, a carpenter or simply unemployed, to suit the context of his audience. What remained consistent was Guignol’s abject poverty, sense of humour and sense of justice, a dangerous attribute in Lyon during the days of the Terror.  What Mourguet dared not say openly in the street, he said through his puppet, responding to daily events and entertaining passers by.

Guignol at first appeared with Polichinelle, an Italian marionette from Bologna with origins in a much earlier era. After the Restoration in 1660, Londoners eager to sample the entertainment banned by the Puritans under Cromwell, flocked to see puppet shows introduced from Italy. Polichinelle quickly became Punchinelle – an indication that violence was as prominent in their little plays as it remains in most modern puppet shows – and before long he was known simply as Punch, of Punch and Judy fame.

www.guignol.fr

From our August 2008 e-newsletter