I had never read Aristophanes, only seen his work performed (by students with a week's rehearsal), and the explosive surprise of his jokes is something that is very hard to contain on a page. The perfect plays to mess around with your friends with, if you're into that sort of thing.

The Knights: 2/5. very confusing. Probably requires context I don't know.
Peace: 3/5. very weird. would probably be funnier performed. alas, I am only one person.
The Birds: 5/5. very funny, would read again.
The Assembly Women: 4.5. funny but kind of Diet Lysistrata. anyway Aristophanes says women>men.
Wealth: 3.5/5. funny satire but kind of confusing and boring. sorry.

I picked this up just for The Assembly Women as part of my efforts to read through a list of the 100 most important plays throughout history. The Assembly Women was wonderfully bawdy and hilarious. I'll have to come back to this one again.

Overall, most of them were more or less amusing but also very educational about contemporary times (including smelly Socrates). The notes and intros all are extremely useful, often even about the wordplays used and how the translators did in bringing those about in English (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). It's really nice to see how comedy doesn't change much, but this collection is not the best of Aristophanes' work.

The Knights:
Fun little competition games, but not much for plot.

Peace:
Crazy fun concept, hilarious beginning with perfect comedic timing(?).

The Birds:
Really absurd humour, I love it. The humongous amount of well-researched puns as well, you'd think Aristie was an ornithologist.

The Assembly Women:
As warned in the intro, the second half is not nearly as strong and completely all over the place, but I still got some chuckles out of it. Also, a modern translation should change the "In on the plot" joke - instead of "In on the pot", since it's about having multiple mistresses, it should be "In on the thot", a much more apt translation. Love all the slander jokes that need long footnotes. As jordana said, Lysistrata Lite.

Wealth:
Barely funny jokes, long and dull plot, everything just got more boring by the end.

Aeschylus sweeps this