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THE BIRDS

A summary and analysis of the play by Aristophanes

This document was originally published in The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 2. ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 43-46.

The Birds fairly sparkles with the boldest and richest imagery within the province of the fantastic. It is a mirthful, buoyant creation, bright with the gayest plumage, a piece of the most harmless buffoonery, which had a fling at everything, gods as well as men, but without anywhere pressing toward any particular object. Yet some have found in it a complete historical allegory of the Sicilian expedition, and others an aspiration toward a new and purified Athens. All that was remarkable in the stories about birds in natural history, in mythology, in the lore of augury, in Aesop's fables, or even in proverbial expressions, the poet has ingeniously blended in this [dramatic] poem; he even goes back as far as the Cosmogony, and shows how at first black-winged Night laid a wind-egg, whence lovely Eros, with golden pinions, soared aloft, and then gave birth to all things. Two fugitives of the human species find their way into the domain of the birds, who are determined to revenge themselves for the many hostilities they have suffered from man; they are held as captives, but save themselves by proving clearly that the birds are preëminent about all creatures, and advise them to collect their scattered powers into one enormous State. Thus the wondrous city, Cloud-cuckoo-town, is built above the earth. All sorts of unbidden guests--priests, poets, soothsayers, geometers, lawgivers, sycophants--wish to feather their nests in the new State, but are bid go their ways. New gods are ordained, of course after the image of birds, as mankind conceived theirs as human beings; the frontier of Olympus is walled up against the old gods, so that no savor of sacrifice can reach them, whereby...