Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith

[6] He also changed the character's occupation from weaver to blacksmith, and altered Eliot's story to make Druce the true father of the child who is left at his house in place of his stolen gold.

[7][9] The play ran for 119 performances and enjoyed tours in Britain and America and revivals, achieving reasonable popularity, and even gaining a burlesque parody, Dan'l Tra-Duced, Tinker, by Arthur Clements.

He has found refuge from an unsatisfactory world in a ruined hut on the Norfolk coast, where he devotes himself to the cultivation of the avaricious sentiment, worshipping his gold as a "bairn" of his own invention, which increases in size and worth with its years.

They are discovered by the colonel and sergeant, in the shape of Sir Jasper Combe (Mr. Howe) and of Reuben Haines (Mr. Odell); the former being recognised by Dan'l Druce at once as the fugitive who formerly solicited his assistance.

Druce fears that the right father of the maiden, Dorothy (Miss Marion Terry), has come at last to deprive him of his adopted child – ultimately, it is discovered that she is his own daughter; or that the sailor-youth will appropriate her as his wife.

Geoffrey Wynyard, too, has fears lest Haines, who is a whimsical fop, with a large amount of cavalier learning and impudence, should succeed in his suit with Dorothy, whom in his absurd manner he affects to love; and, as a ruse, seeks to throw the bewildered sergeant off his guard by speaking rather sportively of the maiden.

In the third act this difficulty, however, is got over, and explanations are made by which impediments are removed, and the lovers rendered permanently happy.The audience was enthusiastic, and the critics generally gave the piece, and particularly Vezin and Terry, a warm reception.

Mr. Howe was faultless in the dignified part of Sir Jasper Combe, and the minor rôles were all adequately filled, particularly that of Marple, the supposed miser's brother, by Mr. Braid.

The metaphysical development implied in the dramatist's peculiar treatment of the subject had relation obviously to some theory in which the writer had believed; but fortunately it was not too abstruse for popular apprehension, though probably not fully understood.A London-based French critic described the piece as "un grand succès", and The Theatre called the story "pure and true and elevated".

However, when George Eliot attended a performance of the play shortly after the opening night, her husband recorded in his diary, "Wretched stuff, poorly acted".