This article offers a critical study of the volume published in 1972 on Witkiewicz’s play “The Mother, whose public presentation was prohibited by censorship. This case happened in the context of the political overtures of the so called Marcelist# period during which the contradictions of Portuguese society became more evident. According to the intention of updating Portuguese theatrical life, the play was suggested by Luíz Francisco Rebello, director of the Teatro Municipal de São Luís in Lisbon. Firstly submitted to the censors in its French translation, the voting ended in a draw, but the performance was finally prohibited in José Palla e Carmo’s Portuguese translation. This case allows us to confirm that, instead of being coherent, the application of theatrical censorship concerning several agents at different levels of cultural and political life is full of contradictions. Based on the analysis of the documents published on the case, namely some discourses produced by several people involved in the discussion, the phenomenon of censorship is discussed here together with its principal components, in order to understand the limits of the concept itself regarding its specificity in space and time.