This article argues that productions of Shakespeare under the Salazar dictatorship reveal something of the inconsistency and awkwardness of the censorship regime. Censors remained unsure of how to appropriate Shakespeare’s international prestige without also endorsing some of his more radical ideas. The paper analyses two translations used for specific performances that illustrate something of this inconsistency: Luiz Francisco Rebello’s Dente por Dente (Measure for Measure), performed by the Teatro Moderno de Lisboa in 1964 and published in the same year and Luís de Sttau Monteiro’s O Amansar Da Fera (The Taming of the Shrew), performed under the auspices of the emporesario Vaso Morgado at the Teatro Monumental in 1964 but only published in 1967. At first glance, the former would seem to be the more controversial production and the latter the more acceptable to the regime. However, it was the latter that was subject to minor censorship on moral grounds. The paper stresses the importance of ambiguity as a resource for translators and performers during this period and argues that translation and performance scholars should work together in order to recover a fuller understanding of the mechanisms of censorship during this period.