Scene I. - A desert Heath.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.

First Witch: When shall we three meet again
  In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch: When the hurlyburly's done,
  When the battle's lost and won.

Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.

First Witch: Where the place?

Second Witch:                      Upon the heath.

Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.

First Witch: I come, Graymalkin!

Second Witch: Paddock calls.

Third Witch: Anon.

All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
  Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Exeunt.

    Alarum within. Enter King Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant.

Duncan: What bloody man is that? He can report,
  As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
  The newest state.

Malcolm:             This is the sergeant
  Who, like a good and hardy soldier fought
  'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!
  Say to the king the knowledge of the broil
  As thou didst leave it.

Sergeant:              Doubtful it stood;
  As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
  And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald -
  Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
  The multiplying villanies of nature
  Do swarm upon him - from the western isles
  Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
  And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
  Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak;
  For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name, -
  Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
  Which smok'd with bloody execution,
  Like valour's minion carv'd out his passage
  Till he fac'd the slave;
  Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
  Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
  And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

William Shakespeare: Macbeth