Les Locataires is a short one-act play performed in 1866 in a café on 78 Rue Popincourt, Paris, by two Guignol puppeteers from Lyon – Victor-Napoléon Vuillerme-Dunand and Laurent Josserand, who stayed in the capital in 1866 and 1867 to try their luck. The handwritten text is kept in the theatre censorship archives in the French Archives Nationales.

The tenants of a building (a Baroness, a Knight and a Marquis) meet to ask their landlord, Monsieur Dubost, to evict Guignol, another tenant who plays tricks on them. For instance, he ties a cat to a bell-rope, puts a tight string in the stairs so that everyone who walks there falls, nails planks on the door of an apartment and writes “closed due to a death”. The landlord asks that Guignol explain himself and the latter tells him that this is how he takes revenge on his neighbours for what they put him through. Because he cannot evict Guignol since he pays his rent duly, he offers him to change apartments but Guignol requests a hundred ecus to move out. The landlord refuses and then fetches the Bailli (bailiff) to make a complaint. The Bailli wants Guignol arrested and calls two Cavaliers (Knights) to help him. Guignol drives the three of them out by handing them blows with a stick.