The history play was Shakespeare’s signature genre, and several of his most popular plays—such as Richard III, featuring the notorious villain whose heraldic symbol was the violent wild boar—were based on history books. Holinshed’s Chronicles was an important source for Shakespeare, providing the basic narrative material for many of his histories and tragedies. A Mirror for Magistrates traced the rise and fall of English monarchs from the past, transforming their stories into moralistic tragedies. Shakespeare’s histories often commented on sensitive political topics, such as Richard II, which recounts the death of King Richard II at the hands of the future King Henry IV. The danger of engaging in such criticism near the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign is represented by John Hayward’s prose history of these events, which was censored and suppressed, thus requiring a false imprint to avoid detection by government authorities