Birds is generally recognized as one of Aristophanes' masterpieces, for its imaginative plot (it is the source of the word 'Cloudcuckooland') and its charming and original lyrics. This is an abridgement of the widely acclaimed full-length edition of Birds, published in 1995, which was the first comprehensive edition in any language. The abridged version retains all the material designed to help the less advanced or less specialist student of Greek to translate, understand, and enjoy the play. It preserves the notes on staging, but the metrical, textual, and ornithological problems are dealt with more summarily, and purely illustrative parallels are omitted. The Introduction covers more concisely the same ground as that of the full-length edition, but omits the detailed discussions of the individual manuscripts and their interrelations.