While critics have noted certain infidelities in Boris Pasternak’s translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, begun in 1938, few have examined the important role censorship played in both Pasternak’s decision to turn to translation and his choice of this particular play. This paper presents the translation as a work of indirect communication, necessitated by, and in defiance of, a censorious regime, and intends to go some way towards contradicting earlier conceptualizations of Pasternak’s work on translation, shedding new light on his novel Doctor Zhivago in the process. The paper first presents some background, giving an overview of the censorship laws in Soviet Russia, as well as a summary of Pasternak’s creative biography. An overview of some earlier views on and analyses of Pasternak’s translation of Hamlet is then presented, together with the author’s responses. The second half of the paper examines features of the translation, as well as remarks made by Pasternak in print and in correspondence with friends and family pertaining to it, to strengthen the claim that translation was wielded by Pasternak as a tool of indirect communication. Hamlet as a Soviet style hero is explored next. Finally, Doctor Zhivago is examined in relation to Pasternak’s translation of Hamlet to support the thesis that, in this novel and in the poems which follow it, we find Pasternak truly grappling with the Hamlet dilemma in all its complexity. The paper concludes with remarks on translation, censorship and indirect communication.