Frederick Gard Fleay

While not the first researcher to take a quantitative approach,[3] Fleay produced a more organized result, with tables of metrical characteristics in the verse of Shakespeare and other English Renaissance dramatists.

"This labour-intensive method of analysis was peculiarly suited to the scientific and positivistic tenor of the times...."[4] Fleay wrote voluminously throughout his long career; at his best, he marshalled extensive fields of data and made the information available to readers.

His Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890) is organized on the model of Jaques' "Seven Ages of Man" speech from As You Like It, II, vii, dividing its subject into: Yet the deficiencies of his work were noted by contemporary critics as well as by subsequent generations of scholars.

[5] He assigned Titus Andronicus to Christopher Marlowe; Richard III and Romeo and Juliet were, he thought, originally composed by George Peele and later revised by Shakespeare.)

Perhaps due to the enormous effort involved in creating his tables of verse-test data, Fleay had a tendency to make mistakes and get things wrong.